Stellaris News

Hello Stellaris Cube-munity!

I know today wasn't in the dev diary cube-endar we posted earlier, but I felt like today was a special day.

In the finest of traditions of Stellaris cubeture, we are happy to introduce a new character portrait: Rick the Cube!

Cube Rick will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak

Rick the Cube will be available Soon™ for purchasers of an unannounced future Stellaris DLC bundle (and also subscribers). We will be revealing more about this DLC bundle in the near future!

Watch the Rick the Cube Short! I am Rick the Cube!



Features:

• Somehow contains more than Eight vertices
  
• Six faces
  
• a cube to take a shining to
  
• a pleasing clockwork interior that is, at times, orange
  
• definitely not a Human, cubed
  
• not a sphere
  
• will never give you up

For those of you who find the Stellaris portraits too anthropomorphized, we hope you will enjoy this new addition to the Stellaris portraits lineup! Encased in rune-covered cube armor, a sort of fully surrounding jacket made of metal, Cube Rick will be an excellent companion to take on a space odyssey.

by Eladrin

Hello again!

Today we’re looking at some general gameplay changes being made to Machine Empires, Individualistic Machines, and the new Machine Ascension Paths. Some of these still include placeholder assets, and values will continue being adjusted until release.

Take it away, @Gruntsatwork.

[h3]Machine and Synthetic Gameplay Changes​[/h3]
History Traits​
One of the first things you’ll find in The Machine Age when creating a Machine empire are the history traits we’ve added for Machine species. These 0 point traits let you choose a little more of your backstory - these define your original purpose.

Were you originally created as Research Assistants, Conversational AI chatbots, Workerbots, or perhaps a domestic servant Nannybot meant to make life easier and pass the butter? Six backgrounds with relatively minor bonuses are available for you to choose from. These are available to both gestalt and individualistic machines.



You’ll find a handful of other new traits or variants of existing biological traits for Machine species as well, including having a dedicated Engineering or Sociology Core or Integrated Weaponry to a Delicate Chassis or Scarcity Subroutines.

Please put down your weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply.

Machines, Aging, and Unplanned Obsolescence​

Immortality is a funny thing in Stellaris - under some circumstances (especially as the game goes on), due to the accident and death events that could target machines, you can end up in a state where a theoretically “immortal” machine leader is actually far more vulnerable to death as the years went on than a normal biological leader.

Machine leaders will now instead use lifespan rules, but enjoy some extra benefits:

• As real go-getters, their starting age lies between 5-10 years, so at the age of 30 they can run your science department with 20 years of experience.
  
• All machines also have an additional +20 years to their default lifespan of 80, resulting in a base lifespan of 100 years.
  
• They are now affected by lifespan-increasing technologies and modifiers, for example, those from Ascension Paths, which we will cover later in this dev diary.
  

In summary, your machine leaders no longer need to fear random death and will live to the ripe old age of 100 years without any additional improvements.

Some forms of immortality, however, have been retained, like the Gestalt Councils and some special ascension traits. All Virtual machine leaders are immortal while Modularity has access to advanced lifespan-increasing traits that can be applied to your machines.

Similar rules will apply to robots, though they have a starting age of 1-5 years, and do not get the +20 lifespan bonus that machines have.

Both biological empires going Synthetic and Machine empires will also reset their age upon completing Ascension to reflect receiving their new bodies. Somewhat paradoxically, all together, these changes should actually result in your Machine leaders being able to better withstand the test of time than they could were when they were theoretically “immortal”.

100 years is a lot better than how long my last smartphone survived.​

Habitability​
Habitability is also undergoing some changes. Having +200% Habitability as a base for all machines limited what we could do with them - it was what previously prevented us from allowing them to be Void Dwellers or using several other Origins, for instance. We still wanted to retain the flavor of Machines having an easier time dealing with alternate climates though, so Machines now use habitability systems similar to organics, with some significant changes:

• As a base, all machines have a 50% Habitability floor, so they will never have below 50% habitability on any world. We felt that this was important because we wanted to retain the feel that machine empires could colonize anywhere reasonably well.
  
• Machine habitability traits cover entire planet categories rather than a specific biome.
  
  • They start with Dry, Wet, or Frozen Habitability, which provide a base 75% habitability on all three biomes associated with the trait and 50% for all other natural biomes.
    
  • As usual, these habitability traits can be changed through robo-modding.
    
    • Most machine empires will have access to robo-modding from game start.
      
    • Origins like Life-Seeded or Subaquatic Machines will start with Gaia World or Ocean World Habitability and will have to research the technology to change their habitability trait, but retain the 50% Habitability floor for being a machine.
• Just like for Lifespan, they will now also gain bonuses from technologies, extra habitability from ascensions and new traits. They now also have access to the standard array of habitability technologies.
  

We believe this will still give them a simplified but more nuanced gameplay experience, with niches and combinations that will come close to the old playstyle while also allowing new fantasies. (Subterranean Machines, for instance, have a 100% Habitability floor and thus are guaranteed perfect habitability everywhere.)



Using partial habitability mechanics opened up the ability to use origins such as Ocean Paradise.
​
Assimilation​
An important quality of life improvement for Machine empires - we have extended the capacity to assimilate other machines or robots into your main species to all machine empires.

They may have shared our name, but they did not share our form. These false Zenak will soon become actual Zenak, including adhering to our charging standards.
(This is what I get for not being careful with my force-spawned empires.)

The Aging, Habitability, and Assimilation changes (and Origin improvements listed later) are all part of the free 3.12 “Andromeda” update.

Individualistic Machines​
Gestalt Machine Intelligences were originally introduced in the Synthetic Dawn story pack, but the authority and most of the civics (other than Determined Exterminator, Driven Assimilator, and Rogue Servitor) will also be unlocked by The Machine Age.

The Machine Age will also allow you to create non-Gestalt Machine Empires, using regular authority, ethic, and civic choices. These individualistic machines are not guided by an overall gestalt intelligence, and thus have their own motivations, desires, and disappointments. Individual machines possess happiness like fully recognized synthetics, can and will form factions, and consume consumer goods.

As non-Gestalts, their leaders will draw from the standard array of leader traits. This of course includes fan-favorites like Substance Abuser.

With all ethics available to you, your empire can be spiritualist machines, fully capable of rationalizing their own spiritual superiority compared to lesser machines and organics. Your factions have been adjusted to fit your mechanical existence, since it makes no sense for spiritualist robots to despise all robots. (It’s okay to hate some.)

You will receive roboticists from your capital building with the additional option of building an assembly plant to boost your production even more. This all comes at the cost of alloys, so carefully decide between expansion, war, and pop assembly.

As individual machines are very much capable and willing of entertaining unique needs, they have no restriction on allowing organics in their empires and can even start the game with Syncretic Evolution as their Origin of choice. As such, they have access to technologies for food production, genetic modification, and other organic focused technologies, with a sharply reduced, but not zero, chance at drawing those technologies if you have no organics in your empire. You are at the very least capable of theorizing about meat and its needs compared to gestalt machines.

Depending on your ethics and authorities, you can enfranchise, disenfranchise, enslave, or empower organics or even other machines in your empire as you wish. The only limits to your ability to tread upon those fragile organics and your fellow machines are the limits of your imagination.

Individual Machines have access to most civics organic empires have access to, as well as a few machine civics, like Warbots and Static Research Analysis, which have been adjusted for them.

Decadent, Deviant, Hedonistic Crime-Bots? Sure, why not.

[h3]More Origins now available to Machines​[/h3]
As part of the 3.12 “Andromeda” release, we’ve done a pass on Origins to see if there were any that could have their restrictions on Machines relaxed.

The full list of Origins that Machine Empires have access to as of the 3.12 “Andromeda” release is:

• Syncretic Evolution (Individualist Machines only)
• Life-Seeded
• Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
• Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
• Hegemon
• Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
• Subterranean (Subterranean Machines)
• Arc Welders
• Prosperous Unification
  
• Remnants
  
• Shattered Ring
  
• Galactic Doorstep
  
• Resource Consolidation (Gestalt Machine Intelligence only)
• Common Ground
  
• Doomsday
  
• Lost Colony
  
• Here Be Dragons
  
• Slingshot to the Stars
  
• Imperial Fiefdom
  
• Riftworld
  

[h3]Transformation Situation and Ascension Paths​[/h3]
With The Machine Age, Individualistic Machines and Gestalt Machines have access to 3 new Ascension Paths (which replace the current Synthetics tree). By taking the Synthetic Age Ascension Perk, you will begin a new Situation to guide them through this momentous transformation.



Virtuality​
Embrace a virtual existence for the majority of your pops. From the cloud, your pops are created and to the cloud they return when their job is done.

Spreading your servers across the stars is an expensive endeavor but your concentrated efforts are unmatched.

• Your pops gain a unique Virtual Trait that becomes stronger as you progress through the tree
  
  • You gain a massive bonus to production that is reduced by the number of colonies you have
    
  • Your housing usage is reduced by 90%
    
  • Your habitability floor is increased
    
  • The more colonies you gain, the weaker your Virtual Trait and the bigger its upkeep will become
    
  • Your leaders become immortal
• You gain a new Policy to focus your intangible virtual economy
  
  • You may choose to focus intensely on Research, Unity or Governance, at the sufferance of the 2 categories you did not choose
• You gain a bonus to encryption and decryption
  
• You gain additional districts and jobs from districts
  

Once you finish the tree, you will transition from a pop-limited playstyle into a planet-limited playstyle, as open jobs will be instantly filled with virtual pops as needed, while unemployed virtual pops will be turned off.



Nanotech​
Big Things are made of Small Things.

By becoming a flood of nanites, your empire changes not just its makeup, but also its economy and growth strategy. Grow. Exploit. Replicate.

While Virtual Machines may seek a “Tall” playstyle, Nanotech Machines flood across the galaxy like an off-white or silvery tempest, specializing in the physical.

You gain access to:

• Ways to transform basic resources into nanites and nanites into advanced resources
  
• A new decision, similar to Terravore world consumption, to turn colonies into nanite worlds
  
• A new starbase building to harvest nanites from uninhabitable worlds
  
• New Edicts to vastly increase your productions or combat capability at the cost of nanites
  
• Nanite probe ships, to bolster your fleets
  

Modularity​
The most advanced traits require the most advanced minds. By embracing Modularity, your empire will have access to traits other machines can only theorize at. The rarest of resources will fuel your enhanced shells.

• Your Metallurgists will produce Living Metal
  
• Your roboticists will be boosted by utilizing living metal as an upkeep
  
• Your workers/simple drones will be boosted by your priest equivalent
  
• Your soldiers and enforcers will grant more stability and be stronger
  
• You unlock 9 advanced machine traits, several trait picks, points, and reduced modification cost
  
• All your leaders will gain the Synth leader trait
  

If you have Synthetic Dawn but do not have The Machine Age, you will retain access to the Synthetics Tree, but with reworked Traditions. These will include bonuses to lifespan, habitability and pop assembly.

[h3]Resistance is the Ratio of Voltage to Current Futile​[/h3]


For owners of Synthetic Dawn, Driven Assimilators will gain two advanced authority possibilities in The Machine Age, the Memory Aggregators and the Neural Chorus. Upon completing the Cybernetic tradition tree, the Assimilator will receive the option to determine their stance on the variance of thought permitted within the gestalt consciousness.

This is the Neural Chorus:



[h3]The Machine Ship Set​[/h3]
In last week’s dev diary we snuck the Machine Corvette into the Arc Welders screenshot.

Here’s a “glamor shot” of the Machine ships that was arranged by our artists:
We finally have a Machine shipset.

[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
Next week we’ll look at the Civics and Structures of The Machine Age, as well as Auto-Modding.

See you then!

Hello Stellaris Community!

In time for the weekend (a long one, in some cases), the dev team has prepared a 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta! This beta addresses some issues that have been left over from the 3.11 release.

[h3]The 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt-in to access it.
Go to your Steam Library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas Tab -> select "3.11.3_open_beta" from the drop-down.[/h3]

[expand]
[Improvement] The Plasmic trait can now be removed from species if you want to clean up your species tab.
[Bugfix] Fixed global ship designs country type restriction so awakened empires are not allowed to use ai transports
[Bugfix] Fixed refugees happening every day instead of every 90-180 days
[Bugfix] Fixed secondary species in random empires not having a habitability trait.
[Bugfix] Fixed the Abandoned Gateway event not taking into account ruined gateways from the Galatic Doorstep and Imperial Fiefdom origins
[Bugfix] Fixed the accidental nerf to Civilian difficulty
[Bugfix] Fixed the Luminary Bloodline not being inherited
[Bugfix] Fixing council positions not being kept for GC:s after adding civics.
[Bugfix] Made removal of expired leader from leader pool only happen on refresh
[Bugfix] S875.1 Warform no longer disappears from leading their ship
[Bugfix] The Grave Guardians will no longer trap you in an infinite first contact loop.
[Bugfix] The Kaleidoscope no longer double dips in your income from trade
[Bugfix] The Parvus event chain will no longer end too early removing all in progresses special projects.
[Bugfix] Updated some text on the Galactic Community UI that was still referring to envoys instead of Delegates
[Bugfix] Various anomalies and dig site events no longer try and give leaders the Hyper Focus trait if they already have it, instead they level the trait up.
[/expand]

The 3.11.3 full release will come at a later date, but we wanted to get these fixes into our players' hands as soon as possible. If you experience bugs or any other issues with the 3.11.3 open beta, please make a bug report!

Thanks for playing Stellaris and have a great weekend!

[h3]Please note save compatibility is not guaranteed between versions. Should you experience bugs or other issues, please first create a new, unmodded save and see if the issues persist. If the issues persist on a new unmodded save, please make a bug report![/h3]

Edit: a previous version of this post contained the line: "[Feature] Added a familiar Friend after you explore Astral Rifts." This was mistakenly added to these patch notes, and is not included in the 3.11.3 "Eridanus" Open Beta.

by Eladrin

Hello everybody!

Today, we’ll go through the three Origins, Ascension Situations, and advanced government Authorities in The Machine Age expansion.

[h3]The Cybernetic Creed​[/h3]
Rejoice, for the The Machine Age beckons!

It's your digital prophet, Gatekeeper, dialing in to decode the mysteries of The Machine Age's upcoming Origins.

Embarking first on our divine odyssey of silicon and the soul, I will introduce you to Cybernetic Creed, a spiritualist fast track to Cybernetics. Your spiritualist pops and leaders will start with the Ritualist Cybernetics Trait, representing your people's long dedication to attempting the perfect fusion of flesh and steel.



Eschew the mundane traditionalist factions of more standard empires for a quartet of Creeds, each a pillar of your economy and spiritual ethos.



Though united in their quest for divine fusion, harmony is a rare commodity among the Creeds. Dissonance and debate fuel their fiery passion for transcendence, and often, you will be asked to make choices that will make one Creed joyous at the expense of the others.



The Conclave of Fusion Situation will unfold after you embrace your sacred mission and interface with the Cybernetics Tradition Tree.



Here, you must guide your faith, defining its doctrine and the final form of your physical vessel.

Will you elevate a single Creed to celestial prominence or attempt to weave a tapestry of unity among them?
The fuse is divine. Augmentation is worship.

[h3]Synthetic Fertility​[/h3]
Next, we delve into the bittersweet digital saga of Synthetic Fertility, our fast track to the Synthetics Tradition Tree.



Boosted by a deep understanding of artificial intelligence and advanced virtual reality, your empire starts the game with 37 Pops. But despite your success, your people are on the brink of extinction. An incurable genetic affliction ravages your species, stopping them from being able to produce offspring.



In a daring leap of innovation, your civilization constructs the Identity Repository. It's a race against time as minds are uploaded, seeking refuge in the digital expanse before death takes them.



Parallel to this digital exodus, you're thrust into the urgent quest for the pinnacle of synthetic salvation - constructing robotic brains and bodies sophisticated enough to host your digital essences.

The final version of this will not have that beautiful magenta image.

Will you seek aid? Will you engineer Synthetic Frames in time to reclaim your place among the stars? Or is this the dawn of an eternal digital slumber for your people?
[h3]Arc Welders​[/h3]
It wouldn’t feel right not to have a Machine origin in The Machine Age. Arc Welders is available to any Machine empire - whether a Gestalt Consciousness or Individualistic Machines. In some ways, it is the opposite of Resource Consolidation. Rather than having an exceptional homeworld where all of the resources of your home system are gathered, these celestial architects hail from a small, resource-poor planet and set their eyes on the skies.



The Arc Welders began constructing an Arc Furnace on a molten world in their home system before achieving Faster-Than-Light travel. This “kilostructure” lets them exploit the rest of their system for minerals and, once complete, for alloy production. Expert engineers, it will only take a little more practice before they figure out the basics of Mega-Engineering. However, it may take a while before they can finish researching that technology.

More details on the molten world Arc Furnace will be revealed in the April 4th dev diary.



[h3]Mechanists Update​[/h3]
With all of the focus The Machine Age is giving to mechanical empires of all forms, it is appropriate to improve the Mechanist origin as well… Mechanist now grants +2 machine trait points as well as an extra trait pick, and fills that by starting your robots off with the Adaptive Frames trait, taking advantage of the new auto-modding system we’re introducing in 3.12 “Andromeda”. You’ll have to wait until April 4th for complete details on how that works.



[h3]Cyberization and Synthesization Situations​[/h3]
I am Ferry, one of the Content Designers on The Machine Age, here to talk about the new narrative Ascension Situations. Utopia introduced the special projects to transform the population into cyborgs or synths. The Machine Age provides you with choices to shape the cyberization and synthesization process, as well as their ultimate effects.

When the Cybernetics tradition tree is adopted, the Cyberization Situation (the Cybernetic Creed Origin has its own version) kicks off with the question who will control the implants in society: the government, private corporations, or will the public be allowed to hack their own implants?

The Augmentation Center building, which is the focus for research and development during the Situation, stays after the situation to boost the cybernetics on the planet it’s on.



However, not everyone is excited about augmentation. Any Spiritualists will either have to be forced to become full cyborgs or be allowed to install the minimum amount of implants necessary to function in this new world according to the Cyberization Standards policy.



For Synthetics, in the Synthesization situation (the Synthetic Fertility origin has its own version), it’s not only Spiritualists who are wary of the planned changes. For some reason, even more people are concerned about scanning their mind to put into a mechanical body. Does your society allow those reluctant to stay around in quaint Old Towns or do they have to go into Biological Enclaves to escape becoming a part of the new machine species?

The Identity Complex building provides Identity Designer jobs across the empire, who boost mechanical assembly speed.



Empires that start as machines, Machine Intelligence or Individualist Machines, get their own ascension situation called Transformation. What this means will be explained in next week’s dev diary.
[h3]Advanced Government Authorities​[/h3]



After the Situation has concluded and the Tradition Tree has been filled, an event chain kicks off to shape society into a new Advanced Authority. Does the cybernetic society allow the individual to flourish, or are implants used to bring the population tighter together? Each of the four base Authorities and MegaCorp, as well as Gestalt Hives, can transform into a cybernetic version of the original Authority, or opt to stay the same.

Let’s have a look at the Imperial Authority. One path through the cybernetic societal shift ends with the Imperial Chipset Authority, where implants are inherited within families to carry strength and knowledge forward through the generations.



The empire Ruler gets access to a new relic called the RulerChip, which contains the memories and experiences of previous rulers. As each ruler dies, their class of Official, Commander, or Scientist will grant different bonuses for the heir as they ascend the throne.



The Cybernetic Creed Origin has its own set of advanced cyber governments, one for each Authority.

For Synthetics, the main question of the societal effects event chain is if the new machine society will put a focus on the physical or the virtual world. One example for the Democratic Authority is Democratic Surrogacy, which replaces soldiers and pilots with remote-controlled bodies.



[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
Next week we’ll look at Individualistic Machine Empires, gameplay changes we’re making to Machine empires, and go through the new Machine Ascension Paths and Transformation situation.

See you then!