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.

Greetings everyone,

Today we bring you a fresh patch, fixing various issues in BioGenesis and 4.0.
4.0.10 should now be available for download via Steam, with GOG and MS Store to follow.

Please find the patch notes below.

​
Improvements​

• Bloomed Biomass is now prioritized if unqueueing a Building that costs Biomass on Gaia worlds.
  
• Cleaned up Terraforming options for Wilderness empires if they did not start with that planet type to avoid the painful game loop of colonizing a terrible world so that you could then pay in energy to improve it.
  
• Candidates that are not the primary species of an empire now have a reduced chance of being elected in Non-Xenophilic, and under the proper circumstances, non-Selective Kinship Empires.

Bugfix​

• Augmentation Bazaars civic no longer claims to increase trade per cybernetic trait
  
• Wilderness Empires will no longer be offered Gene Seed Purification
  
• The final tier of the Gaia Seeder building will no longer be destroyed in Wilderness Empires
  
• Wilderness Biomass is now more likely to gain the Bloomed trait
  
• Democratic Transference will no longer be granting hundred times more efficiency than expected.
  
• Biological Ship empires should now be able to grow Fledgling Dragons when playing the Here Be Dragons origin.
  
• Fixed the Expand Planet Decision for Wilderness refunding the Biomass spent
  
• Updated the "Weak" trait tooltip
  
• Fixed outdated Overtuned Traits tooltips
  
• Restored icons to the "Win a War" Focus Card
  
• Total War Empires can now complete the "Win a War" Focus Card
  
• Terravores will no longer be give the "Terraform 3 Worlds" Focus Task
  
• Delicious and Felsic species traits now give +100% job efficiency to livestock jobs
  
• Secrets of Inetian Traders' vanilla modifier now reduces trade fees.
  
• Fixed the Mutagenic Spas descriptions because they weren't displaying the correct job swap.
  
• Fixed Clear Design for space fauna duplicating components and not clearing anything.
  
• Fix some incorrect text in civics tooltips during empire creation
  
• Slaves and purged pop groups no longer listed as being demoted
  
• Bio-trophies and some other jobs cannot be automated anymore, as funny as it was for the Rogue Servitors to be so sad at the empty domes and make animatronic trophies to care for.
  
• Fix some modifiers missing from job production tooltips.
  
• Fix to Tiyanki Graveyard animation
  
• Xenophobes are once again prevented from giving Full Citizenship and Military Service to Xenos
  
• Adjustments to Xeno Mediator to be correct for 4.0
  
• You can no longer build rural support district specialisations in urban districts if the planet type does not have the district type it would support
  
• AI will stop losing colonies due to resettlement
  
• AI will stop resettling from and into planets being colonized

Balance​

• Augmentation Bazaars grant access to Augmentation Merchants which combine the benefits of Merchants and Executives in one
  
• Hyperlane Breach Points and Hyperspace Slipstreams technologies now also increase the number of pops that can move each month due to Automatic Resettlement by +25%
  
• Doubled the effect Transit Hubs have on Automatic Resettlement to +200%.

UI​

• Significantly improved Pop Job's production tooltip and details panel
  
• Buildings in the Planet UI do not escape their frames anymore.
  
• Updated the size of the Districts backgrounds, so their sizes and their padding are evenly distributed.
  
• Updated the District Cap Background size and also the district slots padding.
  
• Added more padding and even margins for the Planet UI.
  
• Updated the look of Planet Production and Planet Deficit section of the Planet UI.
  
• When opening the leaders view, the Available Positions window will now always start closed.

Performance​

• Reduced the amount of pop groups by adding a mechanic for merging smaller similar ones.
  
• Calculate the planet upkeep/produce/profit during the monthly tick and use the cached amount for all the calculations
  
• Prevented monthly job assignment from triggering again the next day
  
• Reduced memory allocations between monthly job distributions
  
• Tweaked the grain size for planetary threaded updates

Stability​

• Fix common OOS related to wrongly recalculated planet profit (again, for real this time)
  
• Some changes that are an attempt to fix a RANDOM_COUNT OOS that we cannot reliably reproduce internally.
  
• Fixed crash when opening leader level up message if there is no trait to pick.
  
• Fix CTDs related to Behemoth
  
• Fixed OOS due to ship designer using synchronized random

Modding​

• Add can_be_automated token for jobs that cannot be automated

We shall carry on and will be back with more at a later date. Until then!

Hello everyone!

Today the artists are excited to bring you the Stellaris Art Blast, but first I wanted a moment to talk about the patching of 4.0 and where we’re going.

4.0.10 will be releasing today (which makes four updates this week!), with the following changes:

​
Improvements​

• Bloomed Biomass is now prioritized if unqueing a Building that costs Biomass on Gaia worlds.
  
• Cleaned up Terraforming options for Wilderness empires if they did not start with that planet type to avoid the painful game loop of colonizing a terrible world so that you could then pay in energy to improve it.
  
• Candidates that are not the primary species of an empire now have a reduced chance of being elected in Non-Xenophilic, and under the proper circumstances, non-Selective Kinship Empires.

Bugfix​

• Augmentation Bazaars civic no longer claims to increase trade per cybernetic trait
  
• Wilderness Empires will no longer be offered Gene Seed Purification
  
• The final tier of the Gaia Seeder building will no longer be destroyed in Wilderness Empires
  
• Wilderness Biomass is now more likely to gain the Bloomed trait
  
• Democratic Transference will no longer be granting hundred times more efficiency than expected.
  
• Biological Ship empires should now be able to grow Fledgling Dragons when playing the Here Be Dragons origin.
  
• Fixed the Expand Planet Decision for Wilderness refunding the Biomass spent
  
• Updated the "Weak" trait tooltip
  
• Fixed outdated Overtuned Traits tooltips
  
• Restored icons to the "Win a War" Focus Card
  
• Total War Empires can now complete the "Win a War" Focus Card
  
• Terravores will no longer be give the "Terraform 3 Worlds" Focus Task
  
• Delicious and Felsic species traits now give +100% job efficiency to livestock jobs
  
• Secrets of Inetian Traders' vanilla modifier now reduces trade fees.
  
• Fixed the Mutagenic Spas descriptions because they weren't displaying the correct job swap.
  
• Fixed Clear Design for space fauna duplicating components and not clearing anything.
  
• Fix some incorrect text in civics tooltips during empire creation
  
• Slaves and purged pop groups no longer listed as being demoted
  
• Bio-trophies and some other jobs cannot be automated anymore, as funny as it was for the Rogue Servitors to be so sad at the empty domes and make animatronic trophies to care for.
  
• Fix some modifiers missing from job production tooltips.
  
• Fix to Tiyanki Graveyard animation
  
• Xenophobes are once again prevented from giving Full Citizenship and Military Service to Xenos

Balance​

• Augmentation Bazaars grant access to Augmentation Merchants which combine the benefits of Merchants and Executives in one
  
• Hyperlane Breach Points and Hyperspace Slipstreams technologies now also increase the number of pops that can move each month due to Automatic Resettlement by +25%
  
• Doubled the effect Transit Hubs have on Automatic Resettlement to +200%.

UI​

• Significantly improved Pop Job's production tooltip and details panel
  
• Buildings in the Planet UI do not escape their frames anymore.
  
• Updated the size of the Districts backgrounds, so their sizes and their padding are evenly distributed.
  
• Updated the District Cap Background size and also the district slots padding.
  
• Added more padding and even margins for the Planet UI.
  
• Updated the look of Planet Production and Planet Deficit section of the Planet UI.
  
• When opening the leaders view, the Available Positions window will now always start closed.

Performance​

• Reduce amount of pop groups by adding mechanic for merge smaller similar ones.
  
• Calculate the planet upkeep/produce/profit during the monthly tick and use the cached amount for all the calculations
  
• Reduced memory allocations between monthly job distributions
  
• Tweaked the grain size for planetary threaded updates

Stability​

• Fix common OOS related to wrongly recalculated planet profit (again, for real this time)
  
• Some changes that are an attempt to fix a RANDOM_COUNT OOS that we cannot reliably reproduce internally.
  
• Fixed crash when opening leader level up message if there is no trait to pick.
  
• Fixed OOS due to ship designer using synchronized random

Modding​

• Add can_be_automated token for jobs that cannot be automated

So far we have released a total of 9 patches but we have not yet reached a place where we want to be. Currently, our major priorities are on multiplayer stability and performance. Our goal is to get the Out of Sync errors under control as soon as possible. As these are notoriously difficult to track down I can’t guarantee it over the next week, but we remain committed to getting back to MP stability. As soon as these are out of the way, improving the AI is next on my hit-list. In addition the team will also keep focusing on the most important issues that we gather from your feedback and our internal testing.

My current plan is to have two patches next week, with the first scheduled for Tuesday. We’ll be evaluating this on a daily basis in case there’s anything that shows up that we deem requires a hotfix, and of course will continue afterwards as long as needed.

Many thanks to everyone who has been reporting bugs and providing save games, it’s helped us tremendously. If you run into crashes, reporting them really helps, especially if you can provide a few lines about what you were doing immediately before it.

Now I’ll yield the floor to Anton.
- Eladrin​

---

Hello there!

As courtesy dictates; Introductions first. I’m Anton and I have the honor and privilege to manage our extremely incredibly talented Stellaris Art Team here in Stockholm.

It’s become a bit of a tradition that after each release, we bring you a Dev Diary from our team, where we get to talk about (and show off!) the art behind that release. And yes, this is that Dev Diary.

So welcome to The Art of BioGenesis & 4.0!

You’ve most likely already watched all the “Art of…” videos we’ve uploaded to the Stellaris YouTube channel (right? RIGHT!?), including the latest one where some of our artists discuss how we approached BioGenesis and the reasoning behind certain creative decisions. But those videos only scratch the surface of what we’ve done.



Fact is, and these numbers are fresh from JIRA, that we logged 870 workdays (that’s over 25 million seconds) on creating art for BioGenesis across all disciplines. That’s nothing short of both impressive and amazing.

Fantastic job, Team!

Now: before we dive into the Meat and Bones (see what I did there?) of this Dev Diary - I wanted to mention two quick things that might come in handy as you scroll through the post:

1. If you click the artist’s name and title (the headline, in bold), you’ll be taken to their ArtStation page, basically their portfolio, where you can check out even more of their incredible work.

2. Likewise, clicking the project title (also in bold) will take you directly to the specific project page on their ArtStation-page.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for now. So before I hand it over to our Art Director, I just want to say Thank you for all the great feedback on our work, we genuinely appreciate it. I know I speak for the whole Art Team when I say that we love creating the art you see and the assets you get to play with in the game.

We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next!

---

For as long as I’ve been at this studio, one request has echoed louder than the rest: Bio Ships. Or, more affectionately (and possibly unsettlingly), meat ships. Some folks were more refined in their petitions - opting for the elegant “Organic Vessels” or “Biological Shipsets” - but the dream was always the same: meaty, fleshy, bony, and squishy starcraft.

With BioGenesis, we finally got to bring that dream to life. And not just one shipset - two. In true Ascension Pack fashion, we had the chance to explore both sides of the biomass coin: the menacing Spinovores and the noble Shellcraft. Two very different flavors of organic ships, two entirely new challenges for our art team.

We usually do hard-surface ships. Angular, mechanical, symmetrical. Bio ships? They’re messy. They're weird. They’re alive. (Are they alive? That’s one for the players to determine ;-) )That meant learning new visual language, new workflows, and in some cases, unlearning habits we’ve built over years. And honestly? It was a blast.

This was a rare chance to stretch some artistic muscles we don’t always get to use. And the team made it count. Every tentacle, plate, gland, and chitinous hull—painstakingly sculpted, painted, and polished with the same care we give our most beloved fleets.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: Our team is small, but they deliver like giants. Year after year, they match (and often outmatch) the output of teams twice or three times their size. Every line, every pixel, every polygon has to carry its weight. No room for fluff. Just art. Just bone. Just muscle and protein.

Hope you enjoy the weird, wonderful biology of BioGenesis. We sure did.

-Scott Austin-

Art Director, Paradox Interactive

---

Biogenesis UI Art







BioGenesis Event Image





4.0 UI Art




















Illustrations and Event Images





Deep Space Citadel





BioGenesis Ships - Concept Art










BioGenesis Portraits













Illustrations and Event Images







Behemoth Concept Art





Biogenesis Ships - Concept Art











Behemoth - 3D Model












Shellcraft - 3D Models







Spinovore - 3D Models







Emma Quer - 3D Artist​
BioGenesis Ship Models










Deep Space Citadel - 3D Model

by pdx_struby

G'day,

The 4.0.7 patch for Stellaris 4.0 and BioGenesis is available now on Steam.

This patch includes some fixes to stability and performance, as well as a host of other tweaks and bugfixes.

Bugfix​

• Localization has been updated for most text
  
• Species modification cost is no longer divided by 100 twice
  
• Machine Nexus Designation no longer mentions Amenities
  
• Tech-World Designation description is more specific
  
• Behemoth death animation particles are now spawned correctly
  
• Fixed an edge case that would fail to remove the tier 3 behemoth after completing the Mind Meld special project
  
• The Fallen Shipyard Deposit will no longer be creating unworkable jobs for Gestalt Empires.
  
• The Nanite Research Complex now grants improved modifiers compared to the base version, giving a reason to build it
  
• Biological Titans now count for your titan cap. I hope you had your fun with titan only fleets.
  
• Random ethics changing should now work properly and not complain about invalid pop group
  
• The shipyard should always display ship design names for military ships again.
  
• Ship Designer will no longer allow to save a ship design with the name of the design with a different ship size.
  
• Cleaned up a few tooltips not being updated for the new 100 pop system including Artifact Relays
  
• Assimilating species with traits that are incompatible with Wilderness, such as Nascent Stage, now removes said traits
  
• Fixed duplicated description for Numistic Shrine
  
• Now only applies empire size penalty on edict costs, not the full empire size
  
• Simulation Sites and their upgrades now increase Unity output instead of Upkeep on their planets
  
• Effective Councilor Skill and Effective Ruler Skill finally add to agenda progress speed
  
• Refined timeline localization
  
• Planetary Administration and other buildings, and General Traits now correctly give Armies
  
• The Perpetual Lightning modifier now has a description
  
• Horizon Needle description now specifies where it has to be built
  
• Fix Automated Workforce not applying correctly district level
  
• Multiple auto modding traits will now work together
  
• Cleaned up a few tooltips not being updated for the new 100 pop system including Artifact Relays

Balance​

• Refitting a DSC no longer costs unity
  
• Reduced the amount of Research added to Civilians from the State Academy and Center of Guidance by 33%
  
• Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Autochthon Monument, their upgrades, and their MegaCorp variants
  
• Added a Minerals Upkeep to Maintenance Drones from the Simulation Site, their upgrades, and their Hive Mind variants
  
• Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Ministry of Culture
  
• Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Strengthened Government modifiers from Under One Rule
  
• Added a minor Consumer Good Upkeep to the Trickle Up Economics Tradition
  
• Eternal Vigilance now fills out your Defense Platform capacity to 50% instead of fully

UI​

• Leader upkeep is now rounded to 1 decimal for consistency
  
• Clicking top bar resource a second time now always closes the market view
  
• Fixed recommended DLC staying visible after exiting the empire selection view
  
• Performance​
  
• Improved performance when hovering over population number in planet view
  
• Fixed a major performance issue caused by outliner starbase entries
  
• Triggered Planet Pop Group Modifiers should have improved performance (and should use triggered_planet_pop_group_modifier_for_all if it will apply to all pops on the planet)

Stability​

• Fixed common OOS by recalculating the profit instead of using the cached data (COUNTRY_RESOURCE)
  
• Fixed CTD when dlc is not readable for unknown reasons
  
• Fixed CTD when events without options are timing out
  
• Fixed invalid memory reads when finishing species modifications
  
• Fixed invalid memory reads as a result from on_pop_growth on actions
  
• Fixed invalid memory reads as a result from on_pop_displaced and/or on_pop_purged on actions
  
• Fixed expansion planner species entry crashing in tooltip
  
• Fixed replace zone confirmation popup sometimes crashing
  
• Fixed crash in grow_pops console command
  
• Fixes ground combat CTD

Modding​

• local_pop_amount is now provided to on_pop_group_resettled on action with the amount of pops resettled
  
• Removed NGameplay.MAX_PLANET_POPS define as it's not used anywhere anymore
  
• Remove obsolete defense_armies_add modifier, in favor of planet_defense_armies_add
  
• Removed build_pops console command and changed grow_pops to do growth, assembly and decline
  
• Added triggered_planet_pop_group_modifier_for_all for triggered planet pop group modifiers that are intended to be split across all pops on the planet

After the deployment of the 4.0.7 update, we discovered an issue in the French localization that would lead to a crash. The 4.0.8 hotfix has been released to resolve this.

Stability​

• Fixed a circular dependency in the French localization that would cause a crash.

We will continue to work diligently on this release to bring you the quality you deserve. Please continue to post any issues you find in the Bug Reports section of the Stellaris forums. The more details there are, with attached save games, the more likely we'll be able to fix it.

Until next time, bye!

Edit: One more for tonight. A 4.0.9 hotfix has also been released, reverting an OOS fix we attempted for (COUNTRY_RESOURCES) that was causing incredible performance issues. We will attempt to have a comprehensive fix for the COUNTRY_RESOURCES OOS in the patch planned for this Thursday.

Performance

• REVERTED an attempted fix for an Out-of-Sync error (COUNTRY_RESOURCES) that was causing serious performance issues.

by Eladrin

We’ve put an open beta up on Steam with some of the fixes that we have scheduled for the 4.0.7 patch, currently planned for next Tuesday. It’s likely that there will be more changes in the final 4.0.7 release, and as a preliminary changelog some of these may be removed if testing indicates unforeseen issues.

This includes a workaround for the common COUNTY_RESOURCES out-of-sync that many players have encountered in multiplayer, and more localization strings for most languages. (Russian, unfortunately, did not arrive in time to make this build. It will be updated when 4.0.7 actually releases.) There's another crash related to Terraforming Candidates that we found and fixed internally, but it hasn't made this release.

To opt into the Stellaris 4.0.7 Open Beta:
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 4.0.7 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.

Bugfix​

• Localization updated for most languages. (Russian unfortunately did not arrive in time for this build.)
  
• Effective Councilor Skill and Effective Ruler Skill finally add to agenda progress speed
  
• Species modification cost is no longer divided by 100 twice
  
• Machine Nexus Designation no longer mentions Amenities,
  
• Tech-World Designation description is more specific.
  
• Behemoth death animation particles are now spawned correctly
  
• Fixed an edge case that would fail to remove the tier 3 behemoth after completing the Mind Meld special project
  
• The Fallen Shipyard Deposit will no longer be creating unworkable jobs for Gestalt Empires.
  
• The Nanite Research Complex now grants improved modifiers compared to the base version, giving a reason to build it.
  
• Biological Titans now count for your titan cap. I hope you had your fun with titan only fleets.
  
• Random ethics changing should now work properly and not complain about invalid pop group
  
• The shipyard should always display ship design names for military ships again.

Balance​

• Refitting a DSC no longer costs unity

Stability​

• fix common OOS by recalculating the profit instead of using the cached data (COUNTRY_RESOURCE)
  
• Fixed CTD when dlc is not readable for unknown reasons

UI​

• Fixed recommended DLC staying visible after exiting the empire selection view.

Modding​

• local_pop_amount is now provided to on_pop_group_resettled on action with the amount of pops resettled

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

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