Stellaris News

Stellaris Dev Diary #387 - 4.0.21 is Out, What’s Next?

[p][/p][p]by Eladrin[/p][p]Hello, Stellaris community![/p][p]Last week I said the next dev diary would be on the 26th, but I didn’t want to wait that long to discuss our plans moving forward.[/p][p]This week we released 4.0.21, with the following changes:[/p][h3]Stellaris 4.0.21 Patch[/h3][p]Improvement[/p]

[p]Storm Aftermath events will no longer happen in systems where you are constructing megastructures. Meaning that it will no longer randomly spawn an anomaly under your Dyson swarm that was 99% done.[/p]
[p]Save game transfer speed is now increased in multiplayer by default. If you encounter difficulties in transferring saves, the host can change to using the former transfer mode through settings.[/p]

[p]Bugfix[/p]

[p]Memorialists now give their priests the ethics modifiers their civic tooltip promises[/p]
[p]Armies that have landed on planets show properly in the outliner[/p]
[p]Reforming the government to Genesis Guides allows building Genesis Arks[/p]
[p]Ringworld districts now correctly spawn on pre-ftl ringworlds[/p]
[p]Fixed ringworlds colonized by gestalt empires having a mysterious city district that shouldn't exist.[/p]
[p]Fixed the leader survived notification text[/p]
[p]Fixed Fear of the Dark random empires being able to get bioships[/p]
[p]The Purity Breach event can no longer destroy colonies[/p]
[p]Fixed an error preventing refugees from behaving properly[/p]
[p]The Fatal Mutations event should no longer destroy colonies[/p]
[p]The Necrophage Purge option will now only be displayed if you can take it, this is to avoid confusion when pops might be getting purged in your empire unintentionally, such as Hive Pops being disconnected from their hive.[/p]
[p]Evolutionary Predator Empires can now once more gain and keep the Psionic Ephase trait[/p]
[p]The Entrepreneur traits once again grant Commercial Pact Efficiency[/p]
[p]Serviles should no longer end up as Specialists or Elites[/p]
[p]Removed an errant plus from some of the mutagenic habitability tooltips[/p]
[p]Fixed the tooltips listing the effects for the Subsume World decision and Xeno-Compatibility AP[/p]
[p]Biologist jobs that aren't zookeepers now have the correct upkeep.[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue that could occur when machine empires colonised ringworlds.[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue where AI empires would respond with generic text when accepting a Status Quo peace deal, instead of dynamic responses.[/p]
[p]Corrected a localization issue where an AI empire accepting peace would incorrectly refer to the player as having "better things to do" instead of themselves.[/p]
[p]Secondary specializations for fortresses and civilian industries on special worlds correctly have doubled jobs.[/p]
[p]Transport ships for eager explorer civics now equip a subspace drive if you haven't researched hyperdrives. They will automatically swap once hyperdrives have been researched.[/p]
[p]Fix a tooltip in the Demographics tab of the Empire view[/p]
[p]Gestalt empires have access to fallen empire trade buildings[/p]

[p]Balance[/p]

[p]Necrophage fixes/buffs:[/p]
- [p]Pops with the Necrophage trait can now grow (slowly) even if there are pops being Necrophaged on their planet.[/p]
- [p]Reduced the Pop Growth Speed penalty on the Necrophage trait from -75% to -50%.[/p]
- [p]Necrophages begin with more of their prepatent species (and fewer of their Necrophage species).[/p]
- [p]Necrophages (and other empires that have multiple species present) should no longer sometimes start with unemployment.[/p]
[p]The Resettlement Prohibited policy now grants +100% Automatic Migration. (In other words, banning manual resettlement increases automatic resettlement.)[/p]
[p]Empires with biological ships can now access repeatable technologies for explosive weapon damage and fire rate[/p]
[p]Machine Worlds now always have their maximum number of jobs.[/p]
[p]Resource Consolidation now starts with fewer Generator and Mining Districts, due to these districts providing 600 jobs each.[/p]
[p]Resource Consolidation no longer has the Malfunctioning Replicator Bay blocker[/p]

[p]UI[/p]

[p]The Colonize planet button can now be accessed on the management tab as well as the surface tab[/p]

[p]Modding[/p]

[p]Add refresh_auto_generated_ship_designs effect[/p]

[p]
If you want to see the list of all of the things we fixed in the previous releases, here they are.[/p][p]We’re continuing to investigate the other issues that you have reported.[/p]

What’s Next?

[p]It’s time to review the last couple of months and look at what we’ve done and where we’re going from here.[/p][p]Back in Stellaris Dev Diary #383, I committed to continuing to fix things until the 4.0 release is in the state it needs to be in. [/p][p]We’ve released a tremendous number of patches since then at a rapid rate - but our patch cadence has become problematic (and even counterproductive) in some ways. Too often in game development, fixing one bug introduces another - and I haven’t been giving our internal QA testers enough time to fully vet and test the changes we’ve been making. Examples from recent patches include a few weeks ago when an unrelated fix to a pop issue caused Wilderness empires to seemingly randomly destroy themselves by killing all of their biomass, or when another fix just after that caused save games to corrupt and become unloadable. [/p][p]We remain committed to continuing to fix things until the 4.0 release is in the state it needs to be in.[/p][p]We need to change how we’re doing this though, taking a more measured and deliberate approach to allow internal testing to catch up while giving you a more stable environment to play the game in. This means that the patching frequency is going to slow down, but with more impactful releases. Our ongoing plan is to make greater use of Open Betas - the first instance of this is the Wilderness Open Beta that we put up last week (which may or may not ever go live based on your feedback).[/p][p]We will be more careful in vetting changes and merging them into that ongoing Open Beta, continuing to focus on stability, performance, AI, and bugfixing. My intent is for us to update the Open Beta on a weekly to fortnightly basis depending on internal progress throughout the summer. While the Stellaris team will be continuing development during this time, it will soon become difficult for us to arrange for live patches - barring a critical hotfix or a “eureka moment”, I expect the next 4.0.x live release will be sometime in August. (Which as mentioned earlier, may not include the Wilderness changes.) To the Modders that have been waiting for a moment of stability, now’s your time - and if you run into issues updating your mods, please don’t hesitate to let us know.[/p][h3]Things We're Actively Working On[/h3][p]For more transparency:[/p][p]I’m personally currently looking at ways to improve the AI’s behavior. Other things currently in active development are OOS investigations, a number of strata issues that affect slavery, purging, and other oddities among pop employment, and more of a design change rather than a bugfix - based on your feedback we’re looking at having newly grown pops go straight into the Civilian stratum or its appropriate equivalent instead of being unemployed members of their parent pop group. While we liked the verisimilitude of top-heavy planets having more stability issues than ones that were more evenly developed, we acknowledge that having a persistent trickle of unemployed pops feels wrong.[/p][p]We’re also continuously looking for performance improvements. We’ve found one so far where every empire was calculating their Biomass total far too often - even if they weren’t Wilderness, and while it was one of the heavier scripts in the early portion of the game, that’s not where our biggest problems are.[/p][p]Some of these will likely go to the Open Beta next week, after more rigorous testing.[/p][p]I will be putting the Stellaris Dev Diaries on hiatus until August, replacing them with the Open Beta updates on that weekly or fortnightly basis as they occur, and we’ll remain in constant communication with you as we continue to update and improve the game.[/p][p]Please continue bringing up the issues you find, balance issues you encounter, and providing save games and out of sync logs whenever you can. They help a tremendous amount.[/p][p]Thank you for playing Stellaris![/p]

4.0.21 Patch Released (checksum bb43)

[p][/p][p]by PDX-Loke[/p][p][/p][p]Dear Stellaris Fans,[/p][p][/p][p]Our latest and greatest Stellaris patch has arrived, resolving a number of bugs as well as bringing further balance to the galaxy.[/p][p]4.0.21 is now available for download. Please find the changelog below.[/p][p][/p][h3]Stellaris 4.0.21 Patch Notes[/h3][p]Improvement[/p]

[p]Storm Aftermath events will no longer happen in systems where you are constructing megastructures. Meaning that it will no longer randomly spawn an anomaly under your dyson swarm that was 99% done.[/p]
[p]Save game transfer speed is now increased in multiplayer by default. If you encounter difficulties in transferring saves, the host can change to using the former transfer mode through settings.[/p]

[p]Bugfix[/p]

[p]Memorialists now give their priests the ethics modifiers their civic tooltip promises[/p]
[p]Armies that have landed on planets show properly in the outliner[/p]
[p]Reforming the government to Genesis Guides allows building Genesis Arks[/p]
[p]Ringworld districts now correctly spawn on pre-ftl ringworlds[/p]
[p]Fixed ringworlds colonized by gestalt empires having a mysterious city district that shouldn't exist.[/p]
[p]Fixed the leader survived notification text[/p]
[p]Fixed Fear of the Dark random empires being able to get bioships[/p]
[p]The Purity Breach event can no longer destroy colonies[/p]
[p]Fixed an error preventing refugees from behaving properly[/p]
[p]The Fatal Mutations event should no longer destroy colonies[/p]
[p]The Necrophage Purge option will now only be displayed if you can take it, this is to avoid confusion when pops might be getting purged in your empire unintentionally, such as Hive Pops being disconnected from their hive.[/p]
[p]Evolutionary Predator Empires can now once more gain and keep the Psionic Ephase trait[/p]
[p]The Entrepreneur traits once again grant Commercial Pact Efficiency[/p]
[p]Serviles should no longer end up as Specialists or Elites[/p]
[p]Removed an errant plus from some of the mutagenic habitability tooltips[/p]
[p]Fixed the tooltips listing the effects for the Subsume World decision and Xeno-Compatibility AP[/p]
[p]Biologist jobs that aren't zookeepers now have the correct upkeep.[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue that could occur when machine empires colonised ringworlds.[/p]
[p]Fixed an issue where AI empires would respond with generic text when accepting a Status Quo peace deal, instead of dynamic responses.[/p]
[p]Corrected a localization issue where an AI empire accepting peace would incorrectly refer to the player as having "better things to do" instead of themselves.[/p]
[p]Secondary specializations for fortresses and civilian industries on special worlds correctly have doubled jobs.[/p]
[p]Transport ships for eager explorer civics now equip a subspace drive if you haven't researched hyperdrives. They will automatically swap once hyperdrives have been researched.[/p]
[p]Fix a tooltip in the Demographics tab of the Empire view[/p]
[p]Gestalt empires have access to fallen empire trade buildings[/p]

[p]Balance[/p]

[p]Necrophage fixes/buffs:[/p]
- [p]Pops with the Necrophage trait can now grow (slowly) even if there are pops being Necrophaged on their planet.[/p]
- [p]Reduced the Pop Growth Speed penalty on the Necrophage trait from -75% to -50%.[/p]
- [p]Necrophages begin with more of their prepatent species (and fewer of their Necrophage species).[/p]
- [p]Necrophages (and other empires that have multiple species present) should no longer sometimes start with unemployment.[/p]
[p]The Resettlement Prohibited policy now grants +100% Automatic Migration. (In other words, banning manual resettlement increases automatic resettlement.)[/p]
[p]Empires with biological ships can now access repeatable technologies for explosive weapon damage and fire rate[/p]
[p]Machine Worlds now always have their maximum number of jobs.[/p]
[p]Resource Consolidation now starts with fewer Generator and Mining Districts, due to these districts providing 600 jobs each.[/p]
[p]Resource Consolidation no longer has the Malfunctioning Replicator Bay blocker
[/p]

[p]UI[/p]

[p]The Colonize planet button can now be accessed on the management tab as well as the surface tab[/p]

[h3]Modding[/h3]

[p]Add refresh_auto_generated_ship_designs effect[/p]

[p][/p]

Announcing #MODJAM2025

[p]by MrFreake_PDX

Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re proud to announce that over the summer, the Stellaris Community Team will be hosting another Mod Jam, with the support of our sponsors at Republic of Gamers!

We’ve had some great results from past Mod Jams, including last year - where for the first time a modder who had never made a mod before placed in the top three. This year, we’ve decided to take a different tack on the classic mod jam setup:

This year you will be choosing the theme!

From now until June 19th, you will be able to vote on the forums, and on discord for one of four themes, and on June 20th, we will officially announce the theme of MODJAM2025 alongside the prizes.

The four themes are:
[/p]

[p]Major Event Chain - modders would be asked to make a major event chain similar to the Horizon Signal, that is either associated with a solar system initializer or planet type[/p]
[p]Origins - we have done origins before, back when they were first introduced, but it’s been five years and this theme is a strong contender - modders would be asked to create one unique origin[/p]
[p]Precursor Event Chains - this is another strong contender. With the ability to choose what precursors spawn in the galaxy introduced in 4.0, there’s plenty of room for more (non-canonical) galactic history to be told![/p]
[p]Crisis Paths - since the introduction of Cosmogenesis in The Machine Age, crisis paths have been moddable, but generally require a lot of work to add to the game when it comes to scripting and artwork (which means we might see fewer finished mods). Modders would be asked to create one unique crisis path and final objective - completing the final objective should trigger the victory screen.[/p]

[p]
So be sure to vote here and stop by the Stellaris discord to cast your vote for the theme for #MODJAM2025, and we will be back next week to talk about prizes and the theme.

If you’re a modder, sign ups for #MODJAM2025 are open now and will be open until June 20th! Fill out this form - and join us on discord - if you want to participate![/p][p][/p][p]Tentative timeline for #MODJAM2025. This is subject to change.[/p][p]
We hope you’re all as excited as we are for #MODJAM2025, and we can’t wait to see what the modders come up with this year![/p][p][/p]

New Stellaris beta tests big, experimental changes to the Wilderness origin

The Stellaris Wilderness open beta has just begun, as developer Paradox trials potential changes to the best new origin in the space strategy game. Introduced with Stellaris Biogenesis, Wilderness allows you to inhabit a sentient planet that gradually spreads its biomass to other stars. It's a tremendously creative alternative to most of the game's playable factions, and has become very popular among players as a result. But it's run into a few teething issues, so game director Stephen 'Eladrin' Muray outlines a new test run for a potential solution, and calls on your help to put it through its paces.

Read the rest of the story...

Wilderness Open Beta Available

[p][/p][p]by Eladrin[/p][p][/p][p]The Wilderness Open Beta we wrote about in Dev Diary #386 is now available on Steam.[/p][p][/p][p]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.[/p][p][/p][h3]Wilderness Open Beta Release Notes[/h3][p]Feature[/p]

[p]Experimental changes to Wilderness:[/p]
- [p]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.[/p]
- [p]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.[/p]
- [p]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![/p]
[p]The experimental fast save transfer for multiplayer is included in this build.[/p]

[p]Bugfix[/p]

[p]Fixed ringworlds colonized by gestalt empires having a mysterious city district that shouldn't exist.[/p]

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