Stellaris News

by Eladrin

Hello everybody!

Today we’re going to look at a likely 3.10 feature, some changes that we’ve called the Leader Consolidation.

With leaders becoming more important to your empire following the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release alongside Galactic Paragons, there were some rough edges leftover and experiences that could be better. Some of the changes we’re implementing during this leader consolidation were things we talked about during the development of Galactic Paragons but decided against for various reasons, or were out of scope at the time, while others are based on data gathered since then and community feedback.
[h3]So What’s Changing?​[/h3]
Some of these names are still being argued over, so are subject to change. Hate one in particular? Let us know. One of us probably hates it too.

Admirals and Generals will be merged into the Commander, the Military leader class.

Admiral and General will remain as veteran classes, with the following foci:

• Admiral - Focuses on Fleets and general naval combat
  
• General - Focuses on taking planets and assaulting static defenses - Armies, Planetary Bombardment, Ground Combat, and attacking defensive structures such as Starbases are the General’s forte
  
• Commissioner - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Martial Law)
  
• Strategist - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Defense position
  

The old Governors and some Envoy functions will be merged into Officials, the Administrative leader class.

Their veteran classes will be:

• Delegate - Focuses on Federations and the Galactic Community
  
• Industrialist - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Industry and Development)
  
• Ambassador - Council Focus (Diplomacy, Espionage, and First Contact), especially suited for the new Minister of State position
  
• Advisor - Council Focus (Economy)

This does give the Officials two council focused subclasses, but the two are different enough that we felt it best to let them specialize accordingly. The Advisor is expected to thrive in some civic based council positions.

Scientists remain the third, Scientific leader class.

Veteran Classes:

• Explorer - Focuses on Surveying and Exploration
  
• Academic - Focuses on Archaeology and Anomalies
  
• Analyst - Focuses on Planetary Governance (Assist Research)
  
• Statistician - Focuses on the Council, especially the Minister of Science position

As suggested in last week’s teaser and by some of the above bullet points, “governor” will no longer be a leader class. Instead, a planet or sector can be governed by any leader, regardless of class, with differing effects. For example, instead of being local planetary decisions, placing a Commander in charge of a sector will place the entire sector under Martial Law. (The exact effects of which will be changing somewhat too - we want it to be a reasonable thing to put the military in charge of a newly conquered or disruptive set of planets until the condition stabilizes.) Administrative leaders will have most of the effects of the current governors, and the Assist Research effects will be moving to the Scientific governors.

You will still be able to override a Sector Governor on a specific planet by placing a Planetary Governor there, so your Forge Ecumenopolis could have an Industrialist governor in a sector that is otherwise led by a Scientist.

We’re also doing a major rebalancing of the traits themselves. As part of this, we’re reintroducing some sector-wide traits to governors (though now they’re split across the governing veteran classes), and the traits themselves will clearly show if they’re of sector or planetary scope. Note that a sector-wide governor trait will not apply to a planet that has its own local planetary governor overriding them.

[h3]So are Envoys Real Leaders Now?[/h3]​
Partially.

A single Administrative leader can be assigned to your Federation and another to the Galactic Community (or Empire) like numerous Envoys did in the past. Their level and traits will determine how effective they are at the job instead of cramming every Envoy you can spare into there, making Delegates the optimal candidates for this sort of thing.

The Minister of State position is being added to the base council alongside the military and scientific ministries. This councilor will also have general effects on diplomacy, espionage, and first contact.

Ruler, plus one red, one yellow, and one blue council member.​

Envoys will remain as they were to represent the Minister of State’s bureaucratic reach, and will continue to handle “minor tasks” such as Improve and Harm Relations, maintaining Espionage spy networks, and First Contact.

[h3]What About Leader Caps?​[/h3]
Leader caps remain, but are per-class, with any over-cap penalties affecting only the particular leader class that is over. Civics, traditions, and other effects that previously increased the generic leader cap will now generally increase the cap for one or more specific classes.

We may end up shifting more of the over-cap penalty over to the upkeep cost of leaders.

[h3]What about Gestalt Councils?​[/h3]
Gestalt Councils currently have a significant advantage in passing agendas in the early game due to having a larger number of councilors. This disparity will be lessened a bit due to the regular empires starting with one additional councilor, and we’re also making council legitimacy (how happy your factions are with your council) affect agenda progress.

Their nodes will get a little bit of a reshuffle to accommodate the various changes, but should otherwise remain generally familiar. We’ll be able to share more details later on during the development cycle.

[h3]I’m a Modder, Tell Me Modding Stuff​[/h3]
We’ll have more details in the release notes, but leader classes are no longer hard-coded and are thus much more moddable in script, so you should theoretically be able to do things like "this leader does research, commands armies, and represents us in the galcom!"

[h3]Is that everything?​[/h3]
Nooooo.

Next on our Custodian “this is not internal politics” agenda is to do a pass on council agendas. Our thought is that agendas should have more impactful results (tangible effects rather than modifiers), and the range of available agendas should be related to the ethics of your active councilors instead of the ethics of your empire.

This is planned for 3.11 ‘[REDACTED]’ at the earliest.

In the longer term, we may want to make greater differentiation between the councils of different authorities - the councils of a Democracy and a Megacorp could feel different from one another, for example.

[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
Next week we’ll boldly go where no dev diary has gone before.

(We're all currently at a staff conference, so dev replies to the diary will be delayed, but we'll make sure to read through all of the comments when we get back.)

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

3.9.2 has been released with a handful of bugfixes.

STELLARIS 3.9.2 PATCH NOTES

[expand]

############################################################​
#################### VERSION 3.9.2 ######################​
############################################################​
Balance

• Pre-FTL empires now have reduced technological development before the mid-game year.
  
• Catalytic empires can now build bio-reactors.
  

Bugfix

• Anomalies that reward Scientist Expertise traits now apply those traits to the Cognitive Node for gestalt empires.
  
• Blocked empires without the Scientific Method technology from constructing research districts.
  
• Federations End should no longer spawn empty habitats if the pre-FTL slider is set to 0
  
• Fix a CTD when loading a save containing an invalid species archetype
  
• Fix for wrong value for evasion in ship design.
  
• Fixed being able to build multiple gaia seeders on a single planet.
  
• Fixed Fallen Empires not triggering their monthly random events
  
• Fixed pre-ftl civilizations that naturally progressed to the Early Space Age being unable to become space faring.
  
• Fixed Secrets of the ... no longer granting Expertise traits.
  
• Fixed stage 4 gaia seeders being buildable, but immediately destroyed by non-Idyllic Bloom empires.
  
• Fixed the Colonial Remains deposits not spawning for the Remnants origin in some cases.
  
• Fixed the Patron achievement not firing.
  
• Fixed the Prethoryn getting stuck because their starting system contains an FTL inhibitor that prevents them from expanding
  
• Fixed the Surveyor not spawning resources in some cases.
  
• Gardening Drones will no longer have an unlocalized string.
  
• Habitat Central Complexes constructed around stars should now be placed further away, so they no longer clip into the star.
  
• Industrial designation is now only available on habitats for gestalt empires, if they use consumer goods.
  
• Merc enclaves now inherit their shipset from their creator.
  
• Paradisiacal Habitat modifiers in Ithome's Gate no longer use placeholder icons.
  
• Restored -25% penalty if the government doesn't have a head of research.
  
• Set a manual planet size for the Toxic God star asset, as it otherwise counts the large visual effects as part of the planet.
  
• The Crystal Splitter will now hopefully stop blowing up Fruitful Partnership colonies
  
• The spiritualist fallen empire will now wake up if you eat their holy worlds.
  
• The knights will no longer try to quest if you pacify their habitat.
  

Performance

• Removed MTTH from anomaly.6710, bane of ship events, horror of designers
  
• Removed MTTH from assorted fallen_empire_tasks events
  
• Removed MTTH from communications_spread.1 and communications_spread.3
  
• Removed MTTH from crime.1, crime.40 and crime.41, plus added pre-triggers to all crime-events
  
• Removed MTTH from fallen_empires.1, fallen_empires.3, fallen_empires.10, fallen_empires.11
  
• Removed MTTH from leviathans.660 and leviathans.662
  
• Removed MTTH from pop.1-13, madness that should have never existed
  
• Removed MTTH from random caravaneer events (cara.4000-4050)
  
• Removed MTTH from refugees.5, scourge of the game, destroyer of performance
  
• Removed MTTH from the Migrating Forests event chain (colony.1 to colony.12)
  
• Removed MTTH from the Orbital Debris event chain (colony.171 and colony.171)
  

UI

• Added new main menu gradient
  

Modding

• Added researchers_add.txt and archaeoengineers_add.txt inline scripts for buildings.
  
• Added chemist_add.txt, factory_add.txt, foundry_add.txt, refiner_add.txt and translucer_add.txt inline script for buildings.
  

[/expand]

3.9.3 is currently planned for a few weeks from now, and will include some more bugfixes as well as some diplomacy changes that we’ve pulled in. The recommended DLC screen updates I mentioned a few weeks ago have shifted to 3.10 at the earliest.

Let’s talk about Diplomacy now.
[h3]Diplomacy and Trust​[/h3]
A common complaint since the release of Overlord and the 3.3 ‘Cepheus’ update is that the galaxy frequently degenerated into a handful of powerful vassal blocs, and things like Federations only formed rarely. A significant cause of this was due to the willingness of AI empires to quickly diplomatically submit to more powerful empires, even if the difference in power really wasn’t all that high. This then led to a snowball effect, as newly encountered empires would generally be less powerful than this already established bloc.

We’ve made a few minor adjustments to AI Acceptance in past releases, but decided that we need a more impactful change to delay this sort of behavior. We do want it possible for these political formations to form, but it shouldn’t be a fast and virtually guaranteed phenomenon.

Trust is an existing concept that grows over time between empires that have diplomatic ties. It grows up to a Trust Cap based primarily on the magnitude of those diplomatic ties, but is also affected by traditions and other sources of modifiers. Since the release of Federations and the 2.6 ‘Verne’ update, Envoys could be assigned to Improve Relations to waive most of the requirements for diplomatic pacts - this has now been largely shifted over to Trust and having an Embassy with the target or the Diplomatic Networking tradition.

The Centralized Yibrak Systems would like to join your network.

These requirements will change the initial flow of the game quite a bit - it’ll be harder to meet someone and have a Commercial Pact, Research Agreement, and the like a few days after finishing first contact, but similarly as a MegaCorp it’ll be rarer to encounter an AI Empire that already has their fill of Commercial Pacts and refuses to enter any more. It takes a bit of getting to know one another before they’re willing to entwine their economies or swear eternal allegiance to one another.

Let’s not be too hasty, maybe get to know one another first.

SPOILER: SOME PRELIMINARY 3.9.3 DIPLOMATIC PATCH NOTES

[expand]

Balance

• Rebalanced requirements for diplomatic treaties to require trust.
  
• Having less than 50 Trust with an empire imposes a -100 Acceptance to them becoming your subject or overlord.
  
• Removed the ability to trade favors.
  
• Insulting someone decreases their Trust of your empire.
  
• The Intimidation menace perk now allows you to ignore diplomatic requirements for proposing subjugation.
  

AI

• The AI will no longer request to become the subject or overlord of another empire unless they have 50 Trust with the other party.
  
• Certain AI personalities (Federation Builders, Spiritual Seekers, Migrating Flocks, and Peaceful Traders) are now 25x more likely to select Diplomacy traditions.
  
• The AI will no longer request to be subjugated by empires that are equivalent or weaker than them.
  
• Trust between nations is now visible in the main diplomatic screen.
  

[/expand]

As another general diplomatic change, we’ve removed the ability to trivially trade favors between Empires. The traditions related to them and the Extort Favors operation will be the most consistent source of favors going forward, though in time we plan on adding more to various events that feel like they really should include a favor exchange. (This pass will not be complete in 3.9.3.)

All values are subject to change, but we’re generally pretty happy with them so far.

Internal testing has shown these changes to be pretty effective at reducing the vassalization blobs while still allowing them to form either over the long term or through judicious application of violence. (Subjugation wargoals do not require trust.) This also gives a potentially interesting hook for the Smear Campaign operation when we revisit Espionage sometime in the coming updates.

[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
Next week we’ll be examining a potential 3.10 feature - the Leader Consolidation and trait balancing.

Hey wait, who put you in charge of that planet?

See you then!

Hello all,
The latest minor patch for Stellaris is ready and released, fixing a number of issues and further balancing the new mechanics.

We're also planning a follow-up 3.9.3 patch for mid to late October, which will include some of the issues brought up during the Open Beta that require new text, more fixes that did not meet the 3.9.2 deadline, and a handful of other improvements.

Please find the patch notes below.

STELLARIS 3.9.2 PATCH NOTES
[expand]

############################################################​
#################### VERSION 3.9.2 ######################​
############################################################​
Balance

• Pre-FTL empires now have reduced technological development before the mid-game year.
  
• Catalytic empires can now build bio-reactors.
  

Bugfix

• Anomalies that reward Scientist Expertise traits now apply those traits to the Cognitive Node for gestalt empires.
  
• Blocked empires without the Scientific Method technology from constructing research districts.
  
• Federations End should no longer spawn empty habitats if the pre-FTL slider is set to 0
  
• Fix a CTD when loading a save containing an invalid species archetype
  
• Fix for wrong value for evasion in ship design.
  
• Fixed being able to build multiple gaia seeders on a single planet.
  
• Fixed Fallen Empires not triggering their monthly random events
  
• Fixed pre-ftl civilizations that naturally progressed to the Early Space Age being unable to become space faring.
  
• Fixed Secrets of the ... no longer granting Expertise traits.
  
• Fixed stage 4 gaia seeders being buildable, but immediately destroyed by non-Idyllic Bloom empires.
  
• Fixed the Colonial Remains deposits not spawning for the Remnants origin in some cases.
  
• Fixed the Patron achievement not firing.
  
• Fixed the Prethoryn getting stuck because their starting system contains an FTL inhibitor that prevents them from expanding
  
• Fixed the Surveyor not spawning resources in some cases.
  
• Gardening Drones will no longer have an unlocalized string.
  
• Habitat Central Complexes constructed around stars should now be placed further away, so they no longer clip into the star.
  
• Industrial designation is now only available on habitats for gestalt empires, if they use consumer goods.
  
• Merc enclaves now inherit their shipset from their creator.
  
• Paradisiacal Habitat modifiers in Ithome's Gate no longer use placeholder icons.
  
• Restored -25% penalty if the government doesn't have a head of research.
  
• Set a manual planet size for the Toxic God star asset, as it otherwise counts the large visual effects as part of the planet.
  
• The Crystal Splitter will now hopefully stop blowing up Fruitful Partnership colonies
  
• The spiritualist fallen empire will now wake up if you eat their holy worlds.
  
• The knights will no longer try to quest if you pacify their habitat.
  

Performance

• Removed MTTH from anomaly.6710, bane of ship events, horror of designers
  
• Removed MTTH from assorted fallen_empire_tasks events
  
• Removed MTTH from communications_spread.1 and communications_spread.3
  
• Removed MTTH from crime.1, crime.40 and crime.41, plus added pre-triggers to all crime-events
  
• Removed MTTH from fallen_empires.1, fallen_empires.3, fallen_empires.10, fallen_empires.11
  
• Removed MTTH from leviathans.660 and leviathans.662
  
• Removed MTTH from pop.1-13, madness that should have never existed
  
• Removed MTTH from random caravaneer events (cara.4000-4050)
  
• Removed MTTH from refugees.5, scourge of the game, destroyer of performance
  
• Removed MTTH from the Migrating Forests event chain (colony.1 to colony.12)
  
• Removed MTTH from the Orbital Debris event chain (colony.171 and colony.171)
  

UI

• Added new main menu gradient
  

Modding

• Added researchers_add.txt and archaeoengineers_add.txt inline scripts for buildings.
  
• Added chemist_add.txt, factory_add.txt, foundry_add.txt, refiner_add.txt and translucer_add.txt inline script for buildings.
  

[/expand]

Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.

If you have an important game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in the new version. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the desired version from the drop-down.

If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

It’s been exactly 100 dev diaries since we introduced the Custodian initiative alongside the Lem update. With that milestone met, and 314 being funny math number, I thought it would be a good time to review what the Custodians have accomplished, some of the process they use, and where we could go from here.

To review, the original idea behind the Custodians Initiative was to do some of the following:

• Tweaking game balance
  
• Adding new content to old DLC
  
• Polishing existing content
  
• Bug fixes
  
• Performance improvements
  
• AI improvements
  
• Multiplayer stability
  
• UI and quality-of-life improvements
  

[h3]So what have they accomplished so far?[/h3]​
In my view, the Custodians have been a pretty solid success.

We’ve done a few things:



















I promised bad math jokes last week: Why did the Blorg cross the Mobius Strip? To get to the same side.​

[h3]So how do the Custodians work?​[/h3]

Ideally, a third of their tasks are dictated by my directives, a third are taken from community requests, and the remaining third are individual developer passion projects. In reality, these segments overlap quite a bit, since we all share many of the same desires.

Before each release, we hold a “Custodian Pitch” meeting, where everybody on the team can write up proposals, give a two minute presentation on what they want to do and why they want to do it, and then a brief but spirited discussion is held debating the merits of the pitch as well as highlighting any concerns or suggestions.

Photo from a recent Custodian Pitch Meeting​

Accepted pitches go onto a team board, get prioritized, and eventually end up on the schedule. Unlike tasks slated for DLCs, Custodian tasks are intended to be able to slip to a later release if they’re deemed not ready to go live yet, and sometimes accepted pitches wait for a while before getting worked on. Rejected pitches sometimes resurface at a later date, revamped to resolve whatever problems the original pitch had.

Part of the Custodian Team Board​

As you can see, far more things get pitched and approved than we can actually do, so prioritization is extremely important. More things will move into 3.10 and 3.11 over time.

The Development Oubliette off to the side is for things that we started working on, but had to pause for various reasons.

Following Overlord, we instituted a rule that expansion work cannot absolutely depend on Custodian work, since we intentionally want Custodian work to be able to slip to a different release if necessary - the Situations system came in a little hot and that had negative effects on some of the systems we planned on using them with.
[h3]So what are some of those notes?​[/h3]
From the “In Progress” section under 3.9 Caelum, we have the Diplomacy and Trust changes that we’ve mentioned a few times. We’ll have a dev diary dedicated to this next week, since these have been accelerated to be included in the 3.9.3 release.

Two weeks from now we’ll be providing more details on the Leader Consolidation that we’ve also talked about in the past. Currently these tasks are in the To Do and In Progress sections of 3.10 Pyxis, grouped by dark blue dashed lines that you can barely see in this image.

Other things on the board without planned release dates include a variety of possibilities. Some are larger scope tasks that involve a large number of Custodians, while others might be the type of thing that can be knocked out quickly.

A handful of them include:

Espionage enhancements

• Make Espionage more impactful, but have systems in place to prevent “dog-piling”.

Continued work on concepts and nested tooltips

• Provide information in a clearer way, avoiding walls of text.

Improve tutorials

• They’re really not good at introducing the concepts new players need to learn the game.

Improve the outliner

• Make the Outliner easier to use during different phases of the game.

Do something with the Megastructures UI

• As the number of large space constructions grows, it gets harder to find the ones you want to build.
  It’s also very confusing to have things that require Mega-Engineering alongside constructions that don’t.

Continue after losing

• Pop up the Select an Empire UI from Multiplayer if you lose a Single Player game, in case you want to continue your galaxy’s story, even if your first empire’s has ended.

Improve species modification

• Address micromanagement and tedium in species modification.

Pop performance

• Pops are one of the greatest sources of late game performance issues. Find ways to reduce their impact.

Ship performance

• Ships (and fleets) are another performance issue to investigate.

Investigate number of habitable worlds (and rebalance if necessary)

• As more scripted systems get added to the game, the habitable worlds slider becomes less accurate.

Make AI personalities matter more

• Review the existing personalities, make them show up in AI weights more often, and differentiate them more.

[h3]Next week​[/h3]
Having come full circle, next week will be about Diplomacy and Trust.

See you then!

by Eladrin

Hi all!

The Stellaris 3.9.1 ‘Caelum’ update has been released, with full release notes listed here.

[previewyoutube]Stellaris 3.9 "Caelum" Release Trailer​[/previewyoutube]

Unless critical issues arise over the weekend, our current plan is to have a general bugfixing 3.9.2 patch roughly two weeks from now. We’re also planning a followup localized 3.9.3 release in mid to late October, which will include some of the issues brought up during the Open Beta that require new text, more fixes that don’t meet the 3.9.2 deadline, and a handful of other improvements.

[h3]What’s being considered for 3.9.3?​[/h3]
Localized updates are the only time we can add new text to the game, so some of the suggestions made during the Open Beta will be included in it.

Agendas will now show the required time to enact.​

We’re also making some upgrades to the existing recommended DLC screen. To make it more generally useful, it will be possible to see things like the tooltips of origins and find out what’s actually in this thing? in-game, hopefully letting you make better informed decisions by seeing what you’re getting before buying any DLC.

Based on the number of requests for it, we’re also considering accelerating the Diplomatic Trust and Vassalization changes Alfray has been working on, which we first mentioned way back in Dev Diary 291. At this point I’m not willing to outright promise this for 3.9.3, but the trajectory looks like I can pull it in rather than waiting for 3.10 ‘Pyxis’. If it continues to look good, we’ll provide more details in two weeks.

Trust, but verify.
(And don’t reveal your tender underbelly until you at least get to know them a bit.)

[h3]More Wallpapers​[/h3]
Free your desktop from that drab background! We have more species pack based wallpapers for you!







4k variants can be found in our wallpaper album.

[h3]Next Week​[/h3]
We’re hitting an auspicious number next week, so we’re stocking up on bad math jokes and we’ll be talking about the state of various Custodian plans - as well as some of the things we’re considering investigating.

See you then!