Stellaris News

Hello all,

We're proud to release the 3.9.3 "Caelum" Patch promised for mid-October. This patch brings with it a balance pass on subjugation and diplomatic acceptance in-general, as well as other balance changes, bug fixes, UI, AI and modding improvements.

Please find the patch notes below.

############################################################​######################## VERSION 3.9.3 ######################### ​############################################################​

Balance

• AI Empires are more likely to seek a federation if their rivals have federated.
  
• Federations (except for Hegemonies) now default to not permitting subject members.
  
• Having less than 50 Trust with an empire imposes a -100 Acceptance to them becoming your subject or overlord.
  
• Hydroponics Designation on habitats now swaps all jobs on the housing districts for farmers.
  
• Increased the importance of being more powerful than your vassal for loyalty purposes.
  
• Insulting someone decreases their Trust of you by 5.
  
• Rebalanced requirements for diplomatic treaties to require trust.
  
• Reduced how excited subjects get about things like shared sensors.
  
• Reduced the effect differing war philosophies has on federation acceptance.
  
• Removed the ability to trade favors.
  
• Replaced all +10% Districts on Habitats from technologies and traditions with +1 District on Habitats
  
• Replaced the upgrade habitat decisions with checks for habitat capital level instead.
  
• The Intimidation menace perk now allows you to ignore diplomatic requirements for proposing subjugation.
  
• The Pharma State civic now provides +1 Medical Worker job to capital buildings.
  
• The Unity from Rivals from the Animosity Diplomatic Stance has been reduced to 10 per rival.
  
• Trade Designation on habitats now has the housing district swap a clerk for a trader.
  

Improvement

• Research, Energy and Mining District capacity on habitat complexes now have their own planetary features to clearly show the number of districts, current number of orbitals and maximum number of orbitals.
  
• The Crisis event chain will now use their bespoke event chain icon.
  

Bugfix

• Added is_scope_valid checks for anchorages.
  
• Fix to hiring events not being dismissed for other players in coop
  
• Fixed concept tooltips for starbase components.
  
• Fixed issue with nested tooltips and mouse tendency being incorrect when using UI scaling
  
• Fixed issue with some portraits being blurry on lower graphics settings due to mip levels being skipped. Disabled the functionality for portraits and related textures.
  
• Fixed the Node Culling gateway leading to an unlocalized string.
  
• Fixed Tiyanki occasionally not spawning correctly at the start of a Fruitful Partnership playthrough
  
• Massive Crater got its 25% pop growth back
  
• Restoring the Payback habitat when your homeworld is a moon now grants a minor orbital instead of a major orbital.
  
• Rewrote math for calculate tendency between mouse and nested tooltip window. This should fix issue with tooltips below and above mouse cursor behaving somewhat differently.
  
• Stopped interactions allowing multiple gaia-seeder buildings on a planet.
  
• The bonus provided by Eclipse from Enmity now correctly grants a 2% modifier instead of a 20% modifier.
  
• Updated the Eclipse tradition tooltip
  
• Updated the massive crater concept tooltip to accurately display the actual deposit.
  

AI

• 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.
  
• The AI will no longer request to become the subject or overlord of another empire unless they have 50 Trust with the other party.
  

UI

• The ship viewer's zoom speed is now scaled to the ship's size.
  
• Tooltips to select agendas now show the estimated time to launch the agenda, based off of your current agenda progress rate
  
• Trust between nations is now visible in the main diplomatic screen.
  
• When switching ships in the ship viewer, the zoom distance will now be preserved relative to the ship's size.
  

Modding

• Added documentation for concepts.
  
• Added support for more object types in concept tooltips.
  
• Fixed gridbox left and top padding not working.
  
• Some objects' auto-generated tooltips can now be shown as concept tooltips.
  
• Support building concept tooltips without valid scope.
  
• Calling non existing events should no longer crash the game.
  

[h3]Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.[/h3]

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 PDX-Ruk

[h3]Stardate 23779.5 - Temba, his arms wide[/h3]

In this week's dev diary, I am taking the reins from Eladrin.
I am a producer on Stellaris and usually help Eladrin as best I can, but today I want to talk about my other project and let Stellaris have a week off before they talk about their next thing.

And that Project is: Star Trek: Infinite



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Watch the video version of this Dev Diary

[h3]Who are you? And why are you Putting Star Trek in my Stellaris Dev Diary?![/h3]

I joined Paradox back in the start of 2021, and was given the task to bring Star Trek: Infinite to Launch.
Today is that day: we launch Star Trek: Infinite.

Why am I talking about Infinite in the Stellaris Dev diary? To start off, I am a producer on Stellaris, but also the producer for Star Trek: Infinite - I love playing both games, and I think some of you might feel the same.

Secondly, as all of you can easily identify, Star Trek: Infinite is built on the Stellaris Engine, with little effort to hide it. Everyone here on the Stellaris team has been giving feedback and tips since its inception, and we are all fully behind it.

While Star Trek: Infinite is not a Stellaris Team project, it is a distinguished member of Stellaris Selective Kinship.


[h3]So why did you want to make Star Trek Stellaris? Err, I mean Star Trek: Infinite?[/h3]

From a product point of view, Stellaris is the best Space/Emergent Story/Strategy game out there. Star Trek has a great tradition of 4x strategy games, and several story driven games. With that in mind, was there a possible way to mix this peanut butter gameplay of Stellaris with the strawberry jelly of Star Trek?

I for one believed it could be done. The big takeaway from Stellaris we wanted in this game was exploration, choice and evolving gameplay. From Star Trek I wanted recognizable factions, lore authentic events and leaders.

This has been our north star since the start. We don’t want to make a game that only explores the existing timeline, nor do we want a game with complete randomness. A balance between the two had to be maintained, and I think we might have pulled it off.



[h3]OK, as a Stellaris Player? Why Should I get this?[/h3]

It really depends on what type of Stellaris player you are. I love making themed factions that are not optimized, but thematically attractive. Setting the difficulty to Ensign/Captain, and seeing how it all plays out. I will usually restart if I get boring neighbors, or I get an unwanted precursor. My favorite Origins are Post-Apocalyptic+UNE, Toxic God, Payback+UNE, or Machine Empire with Eager Explorers. I also lean heavily away from micromanagement and build optimization.

If you play anything like me, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think seeing Klingons going to war with Romulans over their claim to Kithomer gives a different flavor than seeing UNE being attacked by Kel-Azaan Republic over a claim in Parvus, Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.

If you think you can be a better Gul than Dukat, and that there should be a statue of you on Bajor. Star Trek: Infinite might be for you…

If you think Romulans should reunite with Vulcan, but it should be done with force, and not diplomacy? Star Trek: Infinite might be for you.



[h3]What about Mods, Custodian Support, Long term life of the game?[/h3]

This is one of the reasons we wanted to make this game a standalone, rather than part of Stellaris. We wanted this game to have its own track and not cause limitations on Stellaris, or Stellaris cause limitations for it. Stellaris should continue to evolve as the best Sci-fi sandbox strategy game in existence, and Star Trek: Infinite should be the definitive Star Trek strategy game.

Mods are already being made, and we have full Steam Workshop support. We will be paying a bit more attention to our terms and conditions, but we have not made major changes to the existing one.

So if this sounds like it could be appealing, check it out here.

Until next time,

PDX_Ruk

Ghost Signal is a VR action roguelite set in the Stellaris universe, where you captain your ship to battle a multitude of alien species. Partake in dynamic space wars, encounter planet sized creatures, gather valuable loot to conduct research, and more. No journey is the same. Will you find the origins of the mysterious Ghost Signal?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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UPGRADE & CUSTOMIZE
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A NEVER ENDING JOURNEY
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A UNIVERSE FULL OF WONDERS
As captain of the Aurora, encounter strange aliens in their home worlds and enter lost temples in the pursuit of the mysterious signal that seems to defy even death.

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!