by Eladrin

The Wilderness Open Beta we wrote about in Dev Diary #386 is now available on Steam.

This Open Beta experiments with a different, more robust model for handling Wilderness' mechanics. We believe that it also better captures the spirit of being the planet itself, and provides more control over your economic production. Please see the linked Dev Diary for more details.

Feature​

• Experimental changes to Wilderness:

  • To prevent issues with biomass not being available on planets due to construction, all Wilderness jobs are now automatically worked without requiring biomass. These jobs are worked by your primary species.

  • Jobs for Wilderness are now also properly represented instead of being worked by a single pop with massive workforce bonuses, you now see exactly how the job is worked, and the sliders are also now usable to customize how much of each job will be worked.

  • These changes are intended to prevent situations where some jobs would go unworked, make Wilderness less bug-prone, and are intended to give you more control over your economy in deficit situations. Please provide feedback!

• The experimental fast save transfer for multiplayer is included in this build.

Bugfix​

• Fixed ringworlds colonized by gestalt empires having a mysterious city district that shouldn't exist.

To opt into the Wilderness Open Beta, go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "wilderness- Wilderness Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. You may need to restart Steam to get it to appear.

Our intention is to run this Wilderness Open Beta for the rest of the summer so we can gather feedback on these changes.

by Eladrin

One more before the weekend!

We have another patch today to fix the save game crash once and for all. (I hope.) This one made up 95% of the crashes that occurred in the last 24 hours, so we're feeling good about it. If you're still seeing crashing after this hotfix, please post your save in the bug report forum - it helps a lot.

4.0.20 is deploying now and should make it to all platforms today.

Stellaris 4.0.20 Hotfix​

• Stability: Fixed a remaining issue with loading savegames crashing or freezing the game.

Have a nice weekend!

Edit: stellaris_test has been updated with this as well, with the faster save game transfer. We've added a toggle in settings so you can turn it on and off (defaults to fase), and if this weekend goes well we're expecting to include it in next week's patch.

by PDX-Loke

Hello once again,

The team has created one more patch for you, including a select few fixes to high impact issues discovered in the last patch.

4.0.19 is ready for download now.

STELLARIS 4.0.19 HOTFIX NOTES

Stellaris 4.0.19 Hotfix​

• Improvement: Habitats once again can build Archives in their habitation districts

• Stability: Fixed issue with loading savegames crashing or freezing the game.

We keep fixing and tweaking based on your feedback, accumulating improvements for another proper patch next week.

Until then!

by Eldarin

Hi everyone!

It’s been a little while since our last dev diary - this one’s also going to be a bit short since we’ve been focusing on stabilizing 4.0 as much as we can.

The 4.0.17 and 18 updates we released yesterday is a pretty massive one with some impactful fixes. I'm pleased with the amount of things we got into it.

Here are the release notes:

Improvement​

• The Hive Fallen Empire ships are now available for Biological Ship Empires if you progress down the Cosmogenesis Crisis Path.

• Changes to ecumenopoleis, ring-, nanite-, hive-, and machine worlds:

  • District specialisations now visually swap to the appropriate art and district names for easier differentiation.

  • Secondary districts now have double the jobs of the primary districts.

• Reverted the most recent changes to fallen empire building limitations. We'll be looking at a better solution for a future patch.

  • 4.0.18: Reverted all fallen empire building limitations from 4.0

• Further Improved the Behemoth Fury endings

• Added the Voidspawn Myocardius relic awarded to whomever manages to take down the Elder Voidspawn

• Starbase Capacity tooltip now shows the number of owned systems contributing to Starbase Capacity.

• Habitation districts on knight's habitats now swap to the Order's Demesne.

• The host now gets a tooltip in Multiplayer on the Start Game button with a list of players that are holding up the game

Balance​

• Wilderness Empires no longer have to consolidate 2500 biomass on a planet to build a Grand Archive

• Secondary districts on hive worlds and machine worlds should now support targeted research specialisations

• Wilderness empires now start with a Heartgrove specialisation instead of a Threadway specialisation

• The event A Complete Collection will now only take one pop, avoiding depopulating entire planets.

• AI empires will be more likely to declare a Cosmogenesis empire a crisis as they develop more Infinity Theses

• The Synaptic Lathe will now ask for a refill if it drops below 50 pops instead of letting itself drop all the way to 0.

  • The Lathe had a "stable state" hack that stopped the purge below 40(00) pops to prevent it from decolonizing before - this has been removed as it should no longer be necessary. Burn those pops if you want science.

• The Control Fragment now waits 2 decades before getting upset about your borders. Expand away!

• Fallen Empire biological ships now equip the reactors of one size category larger, this also applies to Cosmogenesis biological ships.

• Resource Consolidation origin needs to have the ability to make more machine (or nanite) worlds to unlock the full potential of their machine world (this includes the doubled jobs in the above patch note)

• Updated weights for techs that unlock rural district specializations

• Doubled the resettlement attractiveness of the Trium Atmospheric Deodorizer(tm).

Bugfix​

• Fixed Wilderness issues

  • It should no longer implode randomly.

  • Balanced effects for Innate Design with Wilderness.

  • Turned Wilderness enforcers into Immunosymbionts to differentiate them from soldier Tamersymbionts.

  • The Wilderness Subterranean Cache building can now be placed in urban and trade district specializations

• Fixed Synaptic Lathe issues

  • The Synaptic Lathe now correctly purges pops and produces science. (Special thanks to /u/Little_Elia for investigating. We fixed some of it differently than you did, but your post helped in identifying the issues.)

  • Pops will correctly process in or out of Neural Chip state if they are moved to or from the Lathe. (They will not be visible in the Neural Chip job until the monthly tick passes.)

  • The Synaptic Lathe purge should once again benefit from things that modify purge speed.

  • The Synaptic Lathe will now ask for a refill if it drops below 50 pops instead of letting itself drop all the way to 0. (The Lathe had a "stable state" hack that stopped the purge below 40 pops to prevent it from decolonizing before - this has been removed as it should no longer be necessary. Burn those pops if you want science.)

  • Fixed how Synaptic Lathe is being displayed in the sector view.

• Fixed non-slaves being assigned to jobs before slaves.

• Fixed recent issues introduced to the Synthetic Fertility origin by removing the invisible purge that was being applied (result in no factions being formed and no leaders being recruitable)

• Virtuality Civilians are now also properly deleted if they do exist somehow. Non-Virtual Civilians can still exist for Virtual Empires.

• You may no longer scrap 50% of your virtual pops for alloys.

• Fixed issues where free traders could start with too many buildings

• Fixed issues with fallen empires spawned by the Scion origin having incorrect buildings and districts

• The composer of strands should no longer devolve thousands of pops. 400 is plenty.

• The Pioneer Politics Agenda now has an appropriate icon.

• Enabled the Heartgrove district specialisation for Wilderness empires

• Treasure Curators now have an actual building icon as their workplace instead of a deposit icon.

• Fixed a rare scenario where Driven Assimilators couldn't assimilate.

• Prevent marking some jobs (criminals, civilians, unemployed) as favorite that should never be prioritized.

• Space Fauna ship size selector will correctly display ship model preview.

• Space Fauna designer will show the progress bar when creating a new design.

• Purging a Gestalt Pop Group will no longer instantly kill all of them. Extract resources to your hearts content!

• Conquered Starbases will no longer have text appear on the "Return Starbase" button

• When checking if ship designs are identical, we now ignore the order of components within a section.

• Fixed saving a Deep Space Citadel design creating duplicate designs and instantly changing the design of your DSCs.

• Update Districts display if their swapped appearance changes

• Processing and Forced Labor Purge should now correctly give resources when purging lithoids or machines

• Habitats now get their districts even when not colonized yet

• Added tooltips to the Behemoth mutation option icons

• Reset Starting System when changing Origins when needed during the Empire Creation

• Mechromancy Empires purging organics once again generate cyborg zombies.

• Blocked Fallen Empire resource extraction buildings from the 6 government building slots

• Blocked the Surface Quarry building on ringworlds and habitats

• Nanotech Research buildings now give regular research jobs, but swap engineers to nanotech researchers

• Researchers for machine intelligences now use more appropriate icons

• Updated the effect tooltips for the Trium Atmospheric Deodorizer(tm) and Cyberdome.

• Empires with Genesis Guides civics now start with a food stockpile and some food income.

UI​

• The "Save As New Design" popup now updates the Save button immediately when you edit the name.

• Fixed ship designer not updating the design name when you change it to the currently saved name.

• Improve Buildings tooltips modifiers handling

• Colony naming will now more often use custom names for the default value (colonizing Mars will propose Mars as the default colony name)

• Fixed some planetary modifier icons that were low resolution

• Fixed some modifiers not appearing in the empire size tooltip.

Performance​

• Reduced mil power recalculations done by outliner fleet entry

• Reduced habitability recalculations done by pop growth/decline

• Reduced amount of times planet view tries to update pop group clothing

Stability​

• Fixed crash in accepting peace due to deal containing transfer of non existing starbase

• Fixed cross OS issue with randomized ethics in pop assembly leading to NUM_POP_GROUPS OOS (this is a big one)

• Fixed mismatch in synchronized/unsynchronized nemesis handling in the voidworms AI that might lead to OOS when becoming a crisis.

• Six more Out of Sync fixes

Modding​

• Adds swap_type and swap_type_weight for districts to District Specializations.

• District Specializations now belong to sets, and Zone Slots can now include or exclude entire zone sets

• Migrated zone slots:zone relationships to zone_sets in place of using inline scripts

• Added can_change_category to pop categories.

• Changed various effects using pop amount/size to allow 0

• Added ship_uses_corvette_reactors and ship_uses_destroyer_reactors scripted triggers

• Added planet_is_habitat_equivalent, planet_is_ecu_equivalent, and planet_is_ring_world_equivalent scripted triggers which are used to determine the job numbers for district specialisations instead of checking the planet classes directly.

• Updated scripted triggers for districts

• Updated scripted triggers for zones

• Updated inline scripts for some research district weights

• Updated events for zone assignment upon a planet becoming a hive, machine or nanite world

• Removed unneeded script for ecus transformations since industrial districts no longer exist

This update has a significant number of major changes, including district swaps for special planets like Ecumenopoleis and Ring Worlds, more fixes to Wilderness, the Synaptic Lathe, slavery, and the most common Out of Sync errors (including the cross-platform OOS that has been plaguing us).

We ended up reverting the changes that were made to Fallen Empire buildings - while we believe that they’re too easily acquired and plentiful, we’re going to take things slower and revisit them sometime in the future. (FE resource extraction buildings are being restricted to appropriate districts though.)

Modders should find the new zone_sets useful. It cleans up a lot of the work we were previously doing with inline scripts.

Instead of individually listing every District Specialization that is allowed or excluded using inline scripts, you can now assign one or more zone_sets to them.

Code:

You can then reference these in the zone_slots:

Code:

The intent is for this to make the creation of District Specializations a bit less error-prone, and make it easier for multiple mods to add more without interfering as much with each other.

We’ve seen a lot of erratic behavior with Wilderness empires, especially when your Biomass totals on a planet get too low, where sometimes jobs would go unworked, and you aren’t always able to influence it in any way.

We’re going to update the beta branch on Steam today to test some experimental quality-of-life changes we’ve made to Wilderness. Some of them are impactful and different enough that we want to get some more eyes on them and get feedback before we consider moving them into the release build.

In the Wilderness Beta, jobs are actually worked automatically, using your primary species for traits. After all, you are the empire. This replaces the massive Workforce bonus that Wilderness pops received, and makes it behave closer to the intended design of the origin. This change intends to make Wilderness generally more robust against bugs and less prone to economic crashes when creating buildings that consume most of their Biomass.

Biomass should still chill “unemployed” like before, but the jobs will use 0 pops instead of 1. This should resolve any of those edge-case issues when many of your jobs wouldn’t be producing.

Bad planet!

As part of this, we’ve enabled the workforce sliders for Wilderness jobs like other Empires have. This should give you more control over your economy, so you can disable certain jobs if you’re running a deficit or otherwise optimize your economy by only working the jobs that you need.

Much better.​

We recognize that this makes your Biomass species less important overall. You’ll probably want to optimize them for growth rather than production since they won’t be working the jobs anymore, so we wanted to put this up in an open beta to get your thoughts.

The Open Beta branch will also include the experimental fast save transfer that we’re currently expecting to go live after we can add a toggle to disable it if it’s causing save transfer issues.

Feature​

• Experimental changes to Wilderness:

  • To prevent issues with biomass not being available on planets due to construction, all Wilderness jobs are now automatically worked without requiring biomass. These jobs are worked by your primary species.

  • Jobs for Wilderness are now also properly represented instead of being worked by a single pop with massive workforce bonuses, you now see exactly how the job is worked, and the sliders are also now usable to customize how much of each job will be worked.

  • These changes are intended to prevent situations where some jobs would go unworked, make Wilderness less bug-prone, and are intended to give you more control over your economy in deficit situations. Please provide feedback!

• The experimental fast save transfer for multiplayer is included in this build.

Bugfix​

• Fixed ringworlds colonized by gestalt empires having a mysterious city district that shouldn't exist.

Our intention is to run this Wilderness Open Beta for the rest of the summer so we can gather feedback.

4.0.19 is tentatively scheduled for next week, with more bugfixes and optimizations.

Today I'll be looking at purging, but if there’s one other bug you could demand we fix in it, what would it be?

Since next week is Midsommar week,our next dev diary will be on June 26th. See you then.

Greetings everyone,

We have just released our latest and greatest patch for Stellaris, 4.0.17 should now be available for download.

This version includes plenty of fixes based on your submitted reports and should notably improve the experience playing 4.0 and BioGenesis, including the multiplayer stability aspect.

Please find the patch notes below.

Improvement

• The Hive Fallen Empire ships are now available for Biological Ship Empires if you progress down the Cosmogenesis Crisis Path.

• Changes to ecumenopoleis, ring-, nanite-, hive-, and machine worlds:

• District specialisations now visually swap to the appropriate art and district names for easier differentiation.

• Secondary districts now have double the jobs of the primary districts.

• Reverted the most recent changes to fallen empire building limitations. We'll be looking at a better solution for a future patch.

• Further Improved the Behemoth Fury endings

• Added the Voidspawn Myocardius relic awarded to whomever manages to take down the Elder Voidspawn

• Starbase Capacity tooltip now shows the number of owned systems contributing to Starbase Capacity.

• Habitation districts on knight's habitats now swap to the Order's Demesne.

• The host now gets a tooltip in Multiplayer on the Start Game button with a list of players that are holding up the game

Balance

• Wilderness Empires no longer have to consolidate 2500 biomass on a planet to build a Grand Archive

• Secondary districts on hive worlds and machine worlds should now support targeted research specialisations

• Wilderness empires now start with a Heartgrove specialisation instead of a Threadway specialisation

• The event A Complete Collection will now only take one pop, avoiding depopulating entire planets.

• AI empires will be more likely to declare a Cosmogenesis empire a crisis as they develop more Infinity Theses

• The Synaptic Lathe will now ask for a refill if it drops below 50 pops instead of letting itself drop all the way to 0.

• The Lathe had a "stable state" hack that stopped the purge below 40(00) pops to prevent it from decolonizing before - this has been removed as it should no longer be necessary. Burn those pops if you want science.

• The Control Fragment now waits 2 decades before getting upset about your borders. Expand away!

• Fallen Empire biological ships now equip the reactors of one size category larger, this also applies to Cosmogenesis biological ships.

• Resource Consolidation origin needs to have the ability to make more machine (or nanite) worlds to unlock the full potential of their machine world (this includes the doubled jobs in the above patch note)

• Updated weights for techs that unlock rural district specializations

• Doubled the resettlement attractiveness of the Trium Atmospheric Deodorizer(tm).

• Bugfix

• Fixed Wilderness issues

• It should no longer implode randomly.

• Balanced effects for Innate Design with Wilderness.

• Turned Wilderness enforcers into Immunosymbionts to differentiate them from soldier Tamersymbionts.

• The Wilderness Subterranean Cache building can now be placed in urban and trade district specializations

• Fixed Synaptic Lathe issues

• The Synaptic Lathe now correctly purges pops and produces science. (Special thanks to /u/Little_Elia for investigating. We fixed some of it differently than you did, but your post helped in identifying the issues.)

• Pops will correctly process in or out of Neural Chip state if they are moved to or from the Lathe. (They will not be visible in the Neural Chip job until the monthly tick passes.)

• The Synaptic Lathe purge should once again benefit from things that modify purge speed.

• The Synaptic Lathe will now ask for a refill if it drops below 50 pops instead of letting itself drop all the way to 0. (The Lathe had a "stable state" hack that stopped the purge below 40 pops to prevent it from decolonizing before - this has been removed as it should no longer be necessary. Burn those pops if you want science.)

• Fixed how Synaptic Lathe is being displayed in the sector view.

• Fixed non-slaves being assigned to jobs before slaves.

• Fixed recent issues introduced to the Synthetic Fertility origin by removing the invisible purge that was being applied (result in no factions being formed and no leaders being recruitable)

• Virtuality Civilians are now also properly deleted if they do exist somehow. Non-Virtual Civilians can still exist for Virtual Empires.

• You may no longer scrap 50% of your virtual pops for alloys.

• Fixed issues where free traders could start with too many buildings

• Fixed issues with fallen empires spawned by the Scion origin having incorrect buildings and districts

• The composer of strands should no longer devolve thousands of pops. 400 is plenty.

• The Pioneer Politics Agenda now has an appropriate icon.

• Enabled the Heartgrove district specialisation for Wilderness empires

• Treasure Curators now have an actual building icon as their workplace instead of a deposit icon.

• Fixed a rare scenario where Driven Assimilators couldn't assimilate.

• Prevent marking some jobs (criminals, civilians, unemployed) as favorite that should never be prioritized.

• Space Fauna ship size selector will correctly display ship model preview.

• Space Fauna designer will show the progress bar when creating a new design.

• Purging a Gestalt Pop Group will no longer instantly kill all of them. Extract resources to your hearts content!

• Conquered Starbases will no longer have text appear on the "Return Starbase" button

• When checking if ship designs are identical, we now ignore the order of components within a section.

• Fixed saving a Deep Space Citadel design creating duplicate designs and instantly changing the design of your DSCs.

• Update Districts display if their swapped appearance changes

• Processing and Forced Labor Purge should now correctly give resources when purging lithoids or machines

• Habitats now get their districts even when not colonized yet

• Added tooltips to the Behemoth mutation option icons

• Reset Starting System when changing Origins when needed during the Empire Creation

• Mechromancy Empires purging organics once again generate cyborg zombies.

• Blocked Fallen Empire resource extraction buildings from the 6 government building slots

• Blocked the Surface Quarry building on ringworlds and habitats

• Nanotech Research buildings now give regular research jobs, but swap engineers to nanotech researchers

• Researchers for machine intelligences now use more appropriate icons

• Updated the effect tooltips for the Trium Atmospheric Deodorizer(tm) and Cyberdome.

• Empires with Genesis Guides civics now start with a food stockpile and some food income.

UI

• The "Save As New Design" popup now updates the Save button immediately when you edit the name.

• Fixed ship designer not updating the design name when you change it to the currently saved name.

• Improve Buildings tooltips modifiers handling

• Colony naming will now more often use custom names for the default value (colonizing Mars will propose Mars as the default colony name)

• Fixed some planetary modifier icons that were low resolution

• Fixed some modifiers not appearing in the empire size tooltip.

• Performance

• Reduced mil power recalculations done by outliner fleet entry

• Reduced habitability recalculations done by pop growth/decline

• Reduced amount of times planet view tries to update pop group clothing

Stability

• Fixed crash in accepting peace due to deal containing transfer of non existing starbase

• Fixed cross OS issue with randomized ethics in pop assembly leading to NUM_POP_GROUPS OOS (this is a big one)

• Fixed mismatch in synchronized/unsynchronized nemesis handling in the voidworms AI that might lead to OOS when becoming a crisis.

• Six more Out of Sync fixes

Modding

• Adds swap_type and swap_type_weight for districts to District Specializations.

• District Specializations now belong to sets, and Zone Slots can now include or exclude entire zone sets

• Migrated zone slots:zone relationships to zone_sets in place of using inline scripts

• Added can_change_category to pop categories.

• Changed various effects using pop amount/size to allow 0

• Added ship_uses_corvette_reactors and ship_uses_destroyer_reactors scripted triggers

• Added planet_is_habitat_equivalent, planet_is_ecu_equivalent, and planet_is_ring_world_equivalent scripted triggers which are used to determine the job numbers for district specialisations instead of checking the planet classes directly.

• Updated scripted triggers for districts

• Updated scripted triggers for zones

• Updated inline scripts for some research district weights

• Updated events for zone assignment upon a planet becoming a hive, machine or nanite world

• Removed unneeded script for ecus transformations since industrial districts no longer exist

Thank you for playing! Let us know your thoughts.

---

Hello everyone!

We've deployed a hotfix to today's earlier release, 4.0.18, which applies a few more changes:

Balance

• Reverted all fallen empire building limitation changes from 4.0

Stability

• Two more potential OOS fixes

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

by PDX-Loke

Greetings everyone,

Another patch has been completed, wrapped up, and sent for distribution via your your platform of choice.

4.0.15 should now be available on Steam, and GOG and MS store following shortly.

Please find the patch notes below.

​
Improvement​

• When a species is modified the new version will now automatically be the default
  
• Updated Job Efficiency modifiers from Purity, Cloning and Mutation traditions to only affect Organic pops (this includes lithoids)
  
• Technologies that when researched upset Fallen Empires are now marked as dangerous.
  
• Limiting the pop housing multiplier to never completely remove the housing needs. Added the define MIN_MODIFIER_MULT that allows modders to tweak the minimum value as needed.
  
• The Synthetic Fertility origin has received a little bit of love. The situation now shows the months until the end of the situation, and the situation progress is now representative of the actual steady progress. At the end of the situation the exact pops amount is now also uploaded, instead of losing the last few.

Balance​

• Wilderness Empires that finish the Domination Tradition Tree now have access to the Hegemony Federation Type
  
• The Psionic Storm is slightly less mystical as it should no longer convert black holes back into real stars, The Great Wound is too mighty for a mere storm.
  
• You can no longer smuggle out Biomass from Wilderness Empires
  
• Technologies that grant Fallen Empire buildings now grant +1 to the empire limit of that building. In addition, these technologies are now repeatable. The technologies that unlock the upgraded versions of the Fallen Empire buildings increase the empire limit of the base version, but the upgraded buildings count towards the limit.
  
• Having the Cosmogenesis Perk that grants access to Fallen Empire Buildings multiplies your empire limit for those buildings by 3.
  
• Fallen Empire buildings that Fallen Empires start with are generally slightly more powerful than those that can be constructed and do not count towards empire limits.
  
• Effects that grant access to Fallen Empire buildings, e.g. dumpster diving in minor artifacts, now grant you one level of the relevant technology.
  
• Gestalt empires can now access Fallen Empire trade buildings
  
• Rare Fallen Empire technologies are now correctly affected by all modifiers to draw weight of rare technologies.
  
• The draw chance for Fallen Empire buildings from Enigmatic Engineering has been decreased from 3.75% to 1.5%.
  
• There is now no limit to the number of times you can research Fallen Empire buildings with Enigmatic Engineering.
  
• Removed technology requirements for basic City District Specializations. An upgraded capital building is still required for the second Specialization.

Bugfix​

• The Awakened Control Fragment will no longer denounce itself in the Galcom when it comes to picking a side in the War in Heaven
  
• The Wilderness will no longer be taunted by the Strip Mine Planet decision, it is now hidden.
  
• Refactored Tzynn Tithe to use the new pop system and being much prettier script
  
• You can no longer raid the poor crisis factions for their pops. They aren't supposed to be real!
  
• Storm Chasers now properly have no rare crystal upkeep on their Storm Attraction Centers
  
• Pirates will no longer decide to set up shop in Leviathan controlled systems.
  
• The pirate event will now check that it has a system it can spawn pirates in before firing. So now if you want to ensure that you don't have pirates you have to build outposts everywhere, which kinda makes sense...
  
• Updated the Esteemed Quartermaster trait to mention 100 Soldiers
  
• Promising young officers will no longer show up when piloting civilian craft. Also updated the event to change picture if the officer was on a starbase or a biological ship.
  
• Deep Space Citadel will no longer display duplicated models in certain situations.
  
• Added missing descriptions to Space Fauna tab in Fleet Management.
  
• Added requirement of >=2500 Pops to Megastructure builder tooltip for Grand Archive.
  
• Fix Grand Archive thinking it's still destroyed after being rebuilt
  
• Fixed leaders getting the wrong number of trait selections.
  
• Cloned leaders now copy pending trait selections from the original.
  
• Fixed Xeno-Compatibility growth calculation using the wrong number of pops.
  
• Aligned Genetic Memory tooltip with effects
  
• Fix missing description for the coordinator job
  
• Corrected job information for Justice Complex and Ziggurat of Justice buildings.
  
• Fixed the Metallurgical Research Lab, Distributed Design Center, Data-Driven Theorem Facility and Military Academy not providing some bonuses for gestalt empires.
  
• Fixed Automation buildings not having any upkeep on habitats
  
• Fix Robot species with negative traits costs sum declining
  
• Uplifted presapients now correctly enter the Civilian stratum
  
• The Nanite Interdictor can no longer equip both cruiser and battleship reactors
  
• Fixed Job Efficiency modifiers for species types not working in some cases
  
• Fix Synaptic Lathe view not always updating properly
  
• Colonizing planets will now take damage again from bombardment
  
• Abandoning and resettling the same colony multiple times will no longer grant you multiple Planetary Root Bundles.
  
• Vaults of Knowledge now once again tracks your leaders destiny traits, and will no longer reset if you lose your capital.
  
• Regular colonies will be destroyed of all the pop groups are already dead. Previously a 0 sized sapient pop group would have prevented the destruction of the colony and some other events (like an ongoing colonization) could have introduced some new pops into the planet - leading to a colony, that just would not die.
  
• Idle gestalt drones now demote much faster.
  
• Colony Auto-Designation no longer thinks that job producing buildings like Temples are 100x as awesome as it should consider them.
  
• Adopting Genesis Guides mid game will no longer prevent you from colonizing planets until you researched any new ship tech.
  
• Ecclesiastical Center colony designation now has proper tooltip
  
• Gestalt Lost Colony Empires will no longer be trying to create buildings they can't use.
  
• The planet view's portrait is now correctly displayed after changing planet class
  
• Common Ground federation allies now start with Planetary Administration building.

AI​

• Significant adjustments to AI priorities.
  
• The AI can now sell Energy for Trade.
  
• The AI is more willing to build Districts, and double down on District Specializations. (Or similar Specializations, like Physics and General Research might go together.)
  
• The AI will no longer feel content with itself if it has 10000 Pops.
  
• Job Output modifiers for AIs on Captain difficulty and higher have been changed to Workforce bonuses. Their jobs will now consume more resources than before, but the difficulty bonus now affects all outputs of their jobs, not just resources.
  
• AI (and Planetary Automation) will now prefer to build inside District Specializations than in free building slots.

UI​

• Add tooltips to Focus Card rewards
  
• Fix an empty cost string in the Change Focus confirm popup
  
• Add a pulsing glow to the district pip about to be built when hovering the build district button

Stability​

• Fixed an OOS where a research agreement would go through on the client but not on the host, leading to random desync
  
• Fixed another OOS at reconnect due to espionage modifiers from the Active Reconnaissance fleet order

Modding​

• Changed leader add_trait to have "trait", "consume_selection" and "show_message" parameters; removed add_trait_no_notify.
  
• Fixed traits override for clone_leader.
  
• Added more info about traits to create_leader and clone_leader documentation.
  
• Most Pop effects that use amounts can now have a randomized range
  
• add_building will no longer add districts that can't be built.
  
• Add country modifiers to District Specialization types
  
• District Specializations can now be limited per planet and/or empire, like buildings
  
• We now have an add_variable effect to complement the subtract_variable effect
  
• Add ai_priority field to District Specializations so AI and Planet Automation know better where to build structures

Our patching frequency is slightly lower now due to the more qualified nature of the changes, but do know that the team is still active on all fronts working on out of syncs, performance, AI, and gameplay improvements.

See you again when we're ready to roll out the next package.

-------

Post 4.0.15 release, we identified an issue with the hotfix and the Wilderness origin, as such we've released 4.0.16 into an open beta.

This is an opt-in open beta, to opt-in: Right click Stellaris, Properties, Betas tab, and choose "stellaris_test" from the dropdown.

4.0.16 Open Beta Patch Notes

• Bugfix: Wilderness Empires will no longer destroy themselves when spending biomass
  
• Bugfix: Virtuality will not delete unemployed pops on colonization
  
• Fix numerous instances of OOS issues
  
• Savegame transfer goes brrr

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

Blub blub! Greetings from your favorite aquatic explorer—it's me, Glu Glu! Yes, I know what you're thinking: "A plushie writing a dev diary? Water you talking about?" But trust me, I'm ready to dive right in and spill the kelp!

My journey began when the Stellaris team decided they needed a new plushie. Choosing just one portrait wasn't easy -- there were heated debates, passionate pleas, and more dramatic gestures than you can shake your tail at. Then Dave found the old Offishal Pun Document from the Aquatics Species Pack and that sealed the deal.

I arrived at Paradox HQ a few weeks ago -- some really nice people followed me around and took pictures and videos of my antics around the office. They said they were getting something called B-roll, I don’t know what that was, but on a scale from 0 to fun, it was infinitely fun!




Definitely unedited images of some of the Video Producers, including their 100% absolutely real faces.

Later that same day, I may have accidentally-on-purpose “liberated” Community Manager Aurora's laptop. Have you ever changed someone’s passwords as a prank? She didn’t find it that funny, but I didn’t find it funny that there were no pictures of Glu Glu on the Stellaris social media pages. So I fixed it!


When we first met, Photoshop, I was but the learner. Now, I am the Master.

Before anyone could say "Man overboard!" I had changed all her passwords and taken full control of Stellaris' social media accounts. You might notice that the Stellaris announcements will be extra sofishticated for the next week, that’s me!

We also did a Makeship photoshoot. I perfected my plush gaze, and my pout is betta than ever. Soon, my photos started surfacing on desks around the office. No idea who was putting them there, but whoever keeps putting them there has exquisite taste, and super warm hugs.


Also seen at the offish: waiting for Game Director Eladrin to leave his desk​

I’ve learned a few new terms in the past few weeks of hanging around the Shellaris office. One of them is: merge request. That’s when salmon wants to make a change to the game, they make the change on their local computer, then send a merge request, and - if someone else approves it - it will get added to the game.

Since everyone is off today, I’ve written a few merge requests of my own, if any of them sneak through, let minnow.


Glu Glu’s proposed Portrait rework


Another Glu Glu merge request: These are the Ocean worlds you were looking for.


Glu Glu merge request: added an Easter Egg to the Aquatics battleship​

We’ll have to wait until next week’s patch to see if any of these changes get approved and make it into the game or not!

In the meantime, I’ve been busy on the Stellaris YouTube as well. I put together this totally accurate and definitely not-biased 100% sure to please YouTube short.



I also took the opportunity to extend my own Makeship campaign! You’d be amazed at what you can get done when people wander away and leave their computers unlocked and unattended!

I am proud to announce the end of the Stellaris Aquatic Plushie campaign will be June 5th! Don’t miss this opportunity to take me home, I could be your proud co-pilot for adventures in trouter space, a fintastic gaming buddy, or even just be there for a snuggle if you’re feeling crabby.

So that's my tail, friends -- I'm Glu Glu, the squishiest explorer this side of Blorg Prime, signing off.

by PDX-Loke

Greetings all,

Another patch is ready for you to download and apply to your copy of Stellaris, improving the gameplay experience in a variety of ways.

4.0.14 is now available via Steam, and soon also on GOG and MS.

Please find the patch notes below.
Balance​

• Fixed Hollow Bones being 1/10 as impactful as it should be. Stay away from big planets birds.
  
• Incubators modifiers will now be a bit more granular and not go from 30% bonus to -10% growth with 40 pops.
  
• Colony Auto-designation now better takes Urban districts into account for flipping to the various Urban-related designations. (We still recommend picking the one you want though. This was mostly intended for the AI)
  
• Gestalt empires can now build trade modules on starbases
  
• Non-gestalt empires can now build solar panels on starbases
  
• Added Logistic traditions for gestalt empires
  
• Split Enforcers and Telepaths
  
• Refactored the psionic pop output from telepaths to be on the psi corp building instead
  
• Introduced Job Efficiency for Psionic Pops modifier where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Cyborg Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Organic Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Empire and Planet Limits for Fallen Empire Buildings now have the following rules:
  
  • If you stole the plans through artifact diving or were gifted them by the Hive FE: Empire/Planet Limit = number of times you rolled the building, capped at 3
    
  • If you got the tech through Enigmatic Engineering: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 3
    
  • If you have Cosmogenesis: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 6
    
  • If you’re a Fallen Empire: Empire/Planet Limit: Uncapped
    
  • Note: It is our intention to replace this with a system that turns Fallen Empire building techs into Repeatable Technologies that base the maximum number of how many you can have be tied to the number of times you have researched it. This is likely to be in 4.1, though may sneak into a late 4.0 patch.

UI​

• Reintroduced the Build District and Clear Blocker button in the District Details side panel.
  
• Planetary Habitability and Devastation should no longer overlap
  
• The column for number of pops in the species view should now correctly display larger numbers of pops without forcing a new line
  
• Added a tooltip to make the inability of building on an occupied planet clearer
  
• Improved Zone replacement popup

Bugfix​

• Dictatorial Cybervision Enforcers will no longer give themselves an infinite amount of bonuses generating infinite amount of resources
  
• Fixed Corporate Angler council positions giving mult modifiers instead of add modifiers
  
• Fix occupied planets still adding their production and modifiers to their owners
  
• Modifier now scales with pop amount in production box and tooltip of planet view
  
• Prevent jobs with 0 workforce being displayed in the Strata production tooltip
  
• Assimilating a species now assimilates all armies, colony ships, and leaders of that species
  
• Added a 1 day count before VIR's enclave tutorial.
  
• Exotic Metabolism tooltip now lists Pop Growth and Habitability.
  
• Fixed the energy cost that scales with pops in the Cyberization event "Radical Physiology"
  
• Changed the French translation of Research from Enquêter to Recherche
  
• Added appropriate effects tooltip for Augmentation Bazaar.
  
• The Celestial Orrery Supercomputer now only gives Physicist jobs
  
• Removed incompatible tech from Wilderness Agenda option
  
• Players can no longer colonize with a prebuilt colony ship if the species isn't allowed to colonize.
  
• Fixed a bug with the years_of_peace trigger that made it not evaluate the delay properly, it was always treated as zero
  
• Fixed an exploit where people could edit their saved empires to start with late-game rewards and effects.
  
• Enforcers now benefit from Specialist modifiers again.
  
• Fixed tooltips for Angler civics
  
• Fixed tooltips for all Astrometeorology civics
  
• Fixed issues with the Astrometeology building for gestalts
  
• Fixed the Beastmaster civic tooltip
  
• Updated nested tooltips for Civil Education
  
• Fixed stability from Byzantine Bureaucracy not applying
  
• Streamlined the tooltip for Catalytic Processing
  
• Fixed Wild Swarm mentioning ships when combined with Cordyceptic Drones
  
• Improved the Dark Consortium tooltip
  
• Contingency will no longer fail to sterilize branch offices on a planet
  
• Demolishing a building on an occupied planet is no longer possible
  
• Blocked Resource Processing Center technology for Wilderness

AI​
Note: These changes are just the start, we have more significant changes planned for upcoming patches. In the meantime, we recommend turning difficulty scaling off if you are finding higher difficulty settings far too easy.

• AI empires will focus a bit more on Industry and Alloys.
  
• AI empires value capital building upgrades more.
  
• AI empires are more likely to build Anchorages if their naval capacity usage is high.
  
• Adjusted the bonuses AI empires receive on higher difficulties. AI empires will now also gain bonuses to automatic resettlement on higher difficulties.

Stability​

• Fixed OOS with different amounts of popgroups
  
• Fixed a Ship Design related OOS
  
• Fixed another possible OOS at reconnection
  
• Fixed CTD that happened on the planet UI for Contingency taken planets

Modding​

• Prescripted empires' starting flags now need to be defined in the 'prescripted_flags' folder

We hope you will enjoy these changes even if they happen to thwart your well-conceived exploits. Do let us know if you devise new ones. Thank you!

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

The 4.0.13 update released today with the following changes:

[expand type=details expanded=false]
Improvements

• Behemoth Fury is now available to Wilderness Empires.
  
• Improved tooltips for the following civics:
  
• Functional Architecture/Constructobot
  
• Environmentalist
  
• Astro-mining Drones
  
• Maintenance Protocols
  
• Ascensionists
  
• Augmentation Bazaars
  
• Brand Loyalty
  
• Death Cults
  
• Dimensional Worship
  
• Balance
  
• Mutagenic Habitability now counts all planet types as ideal for upgrading Gaiaseeders
  
• Dramatically increased the draw chance for the Mineral Purification, Global Energy Management and Food Processing technologies
  
• Rebalanced the Pleasure Seeker civics to transform Civilians into Hedonists
  
• Logistic Drones are now Complex Drones not Menial Drones

Bugfix

• Fixed invaded pre-ftls not becoming biotrophies
  
• People once more die when they are put in the Lathe
  
• Bio-Swarmer missiles can now be used by all biological ships with medium weapon slots (including defensive platforms)
  
• Pops that are being pampered will now be forcibly switched to the correct living standard
  
• Replacing a district specialisation no longer destroys CyberCreed buildings that should be kept
  
• Corrected a tooltip bug where a planet would display itself as a possible migration target.
  
• Fixed capitalisation for resources in trade policies
  
• Updated assorted modifiers that still referred to Clerks
  
• A Trade deficit now causes Job Efficiency and Empire Size issues
  
• Fixed the tooltip for the Polymelic trait
  
• Armies now protect 200 pops from raiding, not 2
  
• Blocked the Federation Code technology for some empires, for example homicidals. To draw the tech, the empire is also required to be in contact with someone they can form a federation with.
  
• Blocked the Development focus task Form a Federation for some empires, for example homicidals
  
• Added swaps for some empires, for example homicidals, for the Development focus rewards Federation Code, Xeno Diplomacy, and Xeno Relations
  
• Updated the Colony view tab mentioned in the hint of the focus task Enact a Planetary Decision to say Management
  
• CyberCreed pops with Ritualistic Implants can now colonise planets
  
• Fixed Recycled and Luxurious traits not applying to Roboticists
  
• Catalytic Processing Civic now lists correct information regarding job swap
  
• Cost for repairing orbital rings when you use bioships is now correctly calculated
  
• Gale Speed trait gained from Defeat no longer causes errors
  
• Fixed scope for LeaderShipSurvivalReason
  
• Fixed scope bug for ruler in leader_election_weight
  
• Fixed Worker Coop gaining Elite strata jobs in too many places and tidied up the civic tooltip
  
• Updated tooltip for Warrior Culture civic
  
• Added a pre-list colon to the Feudal Society civic's tooltip
  
• The everychanging stone can no longer cause artisans to have negative mineral upkeep
  
• Gave the Neural Chorus advanced authority the pop growth speed modifier that had accidentally been assigned to Memory Aggregator
  
• The Planetary Supercomputer no longer has an empire cap of 1
  
• The Research Institute/Planetary Supercomputer no longer give scientist capacity
  
• Added dashes to Traits tooltips and list items
  
• Fixed trigger logic for criminal syndicates and federations
  
• Fixed Offspring Bioships not being visible in game
  
• Fixed Offspring Bioships not being labelled as non-offspring ships in the ship designer
  
• The Machine Uprising will no longer spawn 100 machine pops for every 1 missing housing. However the pop-rework seems to have handled 6 million machine pops okay.
  
• Stopped removing occupation armies for bombarded and invaded planets on savegame load
  
• Repairing ruined buildings in zones is now always possible.

Performance

• Flattened pop job modifier node into planet one
  
• Made clearing modifiers a fire and forget job

Stability

• Fixed a possible OOS when a player leaves the game.
  
• Fix CTD when generating a Cosmic Storm mesh.
  
• Fixed a random freeze when loading save with stations containing multiple defence platforms.

[/expand]
We expect the 4.0.14 release will be next week (probably on Tuesday), and is expected to include some fixes to a few infinite loops and some select balance changes (like splitting up Enforcers and Telepaths again). It will be a short work week here in Sweden, so it’s likely to be the only update of the week.

As I mentioned last week, with multiplayer stability largely handled, AI is one of our next focuses. Today I want to talk about AI benchmarks, and have a discussion with you about how we should measure “success”.


The AI in Stellaris has always been designed as very reactive, and AI personality has a massive impact on their behavior. Our goal is for our AI empires to feel like actors in the galactic play - acting in a manner consistent with their Origins, Authorities, Civics, and Ethics rather than always picking the “meta” play.

They do still need to put up a bit of a challenge though, especially at higher difficulties.

The first economic goal we make for our AI is “please don’t collapse in an economic death spiral”, and it’s actually far better at that in 4.0 than it was in 3.x. The current AI does NOT meet the second “provide an adequate challenge” goal though.

One of the fundamental tools we have for our AIs are resource targets in their economic plans. They’ll strive to reach those targets, and many of these are set as “scaling” - if they meet the target, they’ll raise the target the next month. This attempts to ensure that they’ll keep thirsting for ever larger research and alloy numbers (or food if they use bioships!) as is appropriate. This is one of the tools we also use to make them exhibit their ethics - Materialists scale their Research targets faster than other empires, so they’ll inherently be more likely to build more Research specializations, while Spiritualists are more likely to have a lot of Unity specializations.

Ironically, improving AI tends to consume any benefits we carved out through performance improvements. The stronger the AI, the more stuff they have - fleets, colonies, and so on.


One way to decide whether or not the AI is performing up to expectations is through benchmarking - what kind of fleet power, alloy generation, and research generation should they have by 2230, 2250, 2300, and so on? Around what year should they hit 10k fleet power?

Then there come questions around whether the benchmarks should differ based on personality type. Should it be different if they’re Democratic Crusaders vs. Peaceful Traders? Or does differentiating them there make the friendlier empires too weak?

I’ve got my own set of benchmarks that come from running 3.14 and from the multiplayer community, and in general, I’m okay with Grand Admiral being significantly harder than it was in 3.14. but I’m interested to hear what you all strive for.

How much research and alloy production do you try to have 10 years, 30 years, 100 years, and when the end-game crisis comes calling? (Include your preferred difficulty settings and galaxy sizes as well if you could, as well as if you change any other important settings like tech costs.)


We’re going to continue with 4.0 post release support.

Since the next two weeks are both short weeks in Sweden, our next Stellaris Dev Diary will be June 12th. (You’ll be hearing from me in patch notes in the meantime though.)

by PDX-Loke

Hello everyone,

Our latest and greatest patch for Stellaris has now been deployed. 4.0.11 is available for download via Steam.

This patch contains plenty of bugfixes, balancing tweaks, performance optimizations, as well as resolutions to the most common out of sync issues. There are a few more of those still under investigation but this patch should let you have a more stable multiplayer experience.

Please find the patch notes below.
[expand type=details expanded=false]

Bugfix

• Fix Faction resource output being exponential
  
• Evosymbionts now have a description
  
• Fixed that eating a baby didn't give you any DNA or genetic insights
  
• Fixed the first tier of the physics lab requiring access to volatile motes to research
  
• A stray K should no longer haunt players that foolishly opened a certain window
  
• Explore a Wormhole' Focus Card is now 'Traverse a Wormhole', clarifying that you have to travel through it
  
• Fixed typo in "Colony View" Databank entry
  
• Added localization string for +3 Unity planetary feature
  
• Federation Cohesion tooltip now mentions Officials instead of Envoys
  
• Death Priests now correctly get +3 base unity output while a sacrifice edict is in effect
  
• Hard Reset event "Our [empire] Legacy" event now works as intended
  
• Observers can open the build queue of the empire they're observing.
  
• Fixed a case in which virtual ascended empires could get unworkable fallen empire jobs on habitats
  
• Fixed adSul not having any resource districts after terraforming it
  
• Species with Mutagenic Habitability now shouldn’t lose it when they bloom from Gaia-Seeders
  
• Xenophobic Pharma State Empires will no longer start with 2 Medical Centers leading to both being destroyed at game start.
  
• Broken Shackle Angler Empires will no longer spawn with a farming district in their city slot.
  
• Amoeboid Pacification Empire modifier now displays effects
  
• Enslaves species located in Synaptic Lathe will no longer switch back and forward between neural chips jobs and slave repurposing job.
  
• Fixed the Auto-Curating Vault (and equivalents) not having an additional bonus on ringworlds
  
• The Organic Paradise building can no longer be built directly
  
• Nexus districts no longer mention Logistic Drones when they shouldn't
  
• Fixed machine empires starting with the wrong number of pops
  
• Neglected Bio-Trophies now show as unemployed
  
• Fixed tooltips for Angler civics
  
• Fixed tooltips for all Astrometeorology civics
  
• Fixed issues with the Astrometeology building for gestalts
  
• Fixed the Beastmaster civic tooltip
  
• Updated nested tooltips for Civil Education
  
• Fixed stability from Byzantine Bureaucracy not applying
  
• Fixed Wild Swarm mentioning ships when combined with Cordyceptic Drones
  
• Streamlined the tooltip for Catalytic Processing
  
• Improved the Dark Consortium tooltip
  
• Fix starting leaders often missing a background job.
  
• Fixed translation error in Korean text about lack of modifier.
  
• Added missing concept tooltip for District Specializations
  
• Fix the ship designer autogenerate checkbox sometimes not working correctly
  
• Weather Forecasting Mode is now listed correctly in Storm Chasers description
  
• Added Augmentor job description in english
  
• Fix the amount of pops affected by the voidworms bombardment
  
• Fix incorrect Megastructures build conditions tooltip
  
• The Synaptic Lathe should once again purge pops. (This will not retroactively affect existing saves.)
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented upgrading building that have planet limit set on them.
  
• Balance
  
• Increased the number of Bio-Trophy jobs provided by most sources
  
• Added the Creativity Exhibition Vault as an equivalent for the Auto-Curating Vault for Rogue Servitors
  
• Machine Intelligences no longer give a growth penalty to organic pops
  
• District specialisations that add unity jobs no longer give coordinator jobs for Rogue Servitors instead they give Bio-Trophy jobs
  
• Bio-Trophies now increase the Job Efficiency for Complex Drones instead of their resource output
  
• Rogue Servitors no longer start with an additional 2000 drones
  
• Rogue Servitors now start with 2000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500
  
• Rogue Servitors now have access to the Sanctuary Enclave district specialisation, granting a large number of bio-trophy jobs

UI

• Notification Icons shan't be blurry no more
  
• Added more visible habitability information in the planet view.

Performance

• Reduced a number of unnecessary re-calculations of ship designs
  
• Sub-species with identical traits and rights will periodically merge together to reduce the total number of species and pop groups.

Stability

• OOS RANDOM_COUNT fix (caused by dependency between planet and galactic object ftl inhibitors)
  
• Fix common OOS related to ship behavior resulting in RANDOM_COUNT and NUM_MISSILE as well as many other OOS codes
  
• Fixed RANDOM_COUNT OOS caused by pop group assembly tooltip.
  
• Fix CTD when calculating Branch office income

Modding

• Added new effect: set_planet_purge_type. Using it on synthetic lathe to have pops purge
  
• Replaced base_cap_amount with planet_limit for buildings

[/expand]

Thank you for your continued feedback! The team is still going strong so please keep reporting any and all encountered issues.

See you again soon.