Stellaris News

3.9.2 Patch Released

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
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#################### VERSION 3.9.2 ######################
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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)

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.

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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.

Stellaris Dev Diary #314 - Pi in the Sky Ideas

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!

Stellaris Dev Diary #313 - 3.9 ‘Caelum’ is Out, What’s Next?

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!

Stellaris 3.9 'Caelum' free update is out now

Paradox have released the latest free update to Stellaris with 3.9 "Caelum". It's a pretty big one too, with a rather long list of changes.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/09/stellaris-39-caelum-free-update-is-out-now

Stellaris 3.9 "Caelum" update now available!

[h2]The free 3.9 "Caelum" update is available now![/h2]

The 3.9 “Caelum” update brings with it bug fixes, improvements to Gameplay, Automation, Performance, and the Leader Cap, on top of adding new content for many of our previously-released DLCs.

Read the full patch notes here.

Dont want to read pages of patch notes? Stellaris Game Director Eladrin joined us on YouTube last week to talk about the new features coming in 3.9!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

You can also read our (translated) Steam post outlining the new additions to Stellaris in 3.9 here.

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

If you have an important 3.8.4 game going, please back up the save file before trying to load the save in 3.9.1. You can roll back to a prior version by right-clicking on Stellaris in your library -> Properties -> Betas -> choose the 3.8.4 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.

Thanks for playing Stellaris, and always remember the galaxy is vast and full of wonders!