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Stellaris patch 3.7.4 revamps payback origin, adds nuclear close calls

Developer Paradox has detailed Stellaris patch 3.7.4, which is out now and makes some welcome changes and improvements to the space grand strategy game following the arrival of the Stellaris First Contact DLC earlier this month. Among the changes are some big tweaks to one of the origins added with the DLC, payback, and a chance for civilizations to have close calls when nuclear war threatens to break out.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Stellaris DLC incoming, as Steam strategy game adds surprise new tech

Stellaris First Contact story pack will add new pre-FTL mechanics

Stellaris Toxoids pack introduces a poisonous order of knights

Stellaris Dev Diary #292 - 3.7.4 Released, and Concepts

by Eladrin

Happy Thursday!

Thanks to everyone who answered our User Research survey as well as to everyone posting in our Custodian Diplomatic AI Feedback thread.

Originally I was planning on just talking about what was going into 3.7.4, with a potential release date next week, but things went a bit better than expected and as of this morning the 3.7.4 patch has been released. Unless something major crops up, the next Stellaris update is expected to be the 3.8 ‘Gemini’ release during Q2.

This patch includes another adjustment to pre-FTL civilizations being too keen on destroying themselves in atomic fire (they now have a significant chance to have a “close call”, and we've adjusted some of the possibility weights some more), but we have a larger solution planned for 3.8.

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.4 PATCH NOTES

[expand]
BALANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS
  • Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a "close call" when nuclear war threatens to break out.
  • Payback Origin
  • If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you
  • The Debt collectors won't bug you anymore if you're currently at war with the MSI
  • Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can't vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires
  • Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals
  • Payback origin: fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire
  • Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire
  • Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
  • Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
  • Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
  • Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
  • The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  • The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
  • Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.


BUG FIXES
  • The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk)
  • Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components
  • Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet
  • It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries
  • Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
  • Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn't reattach itself to the galaxy.
  • Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
  • Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
  • Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
  • Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
  • Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don't own First Contact
  • Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
  • Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
  • Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
  • AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
  • Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
  • Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
  • Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
  • Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
  • Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
  • Fix crash when a species doesn't have a valid archetype
  • Removed ability to use the "reveal yourself" diplomatic action while you're already revealing yourself
  • Pre-FTL agreements like "give technology" now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring
  • Blocked "Salacious Affair" envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds
  • Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases
  • Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
  • Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
  • If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
  • Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC
  • Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
  • Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
  • Made it so you can't get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn't allow for espionage.
  • Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
  • Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
  • Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
  • Fixed a crash when loading old savegames
  • Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.

[/expand]
[h3]Concepts​[/h3]
As part of our ongoing efforts to make the game less daunting for new and returning players, we’ve discovered a UX Insight Technology while observing the pre-FTL games made by our sibling studios. In 3.8 we’ll be introducing Concepts as a variant of the nested tooltips you may be familiar with from Crusader Kings or Victoria.

Our primary goal with Concepts is to simplify tooltips while providing the means to get more information than before. Instead of cluttering the base tooltips with complete details, you can dig down to learn more about key terms as desired. While it may change for the final release, Concepts are currently planned to always be shown in a specific Teal color. After a brief delay (or after clicking the middle mouse button), a tooltip that possesses in-line Concepts will lock into place as shown below.

Our initial efforts in introducing these have been focused on the Galaxy Settings before starting a new game to further explain some details that might not be obvious at first glance, but to fully explain would bloat the normal tooltip into a wall of text.

An Example of Concepts

While Concepts in 3.8 will initially be limited exclusively to Galaxy Settings, we’re planning on expanding the use of Concepts to Empire Creation and beyond during the Custodian releases over the next year.

SPOILER: CONCEPT DETAILS FOR MODDERS
[expand]
common\game_concepts will have a 00_game_concepts.txt where we define concepts, alongside icons and aliases.

concept_fallen_empires = {​
alias = { concept_fallen_empire }​
}​
concept_awakened_empires = {​
alias = { concept_awakened_empire concept_fallen_empire_awakening concept_awaken }​
}​
concept_marauder_empires = {​
alias = { concept_marauder_empire }​
}​
concept_technology = {​
icon = "gfx/interface/icons/concepts/concept_technology.dds"​
alias = { concept_technologies }​
}​


Any concept that does not have an icon defined will default to a "thinking cloud" icon that's in Defines.


Marauder Empires concept, showing off the default icon.

Concepts themselves are referenced in-line in localization using the ['concept'] notation:

FE_FALLEN_EMPIRES_TOOLTIP:1 "§HNumber of Fallen Empires§!\nThis controls the maximum number of ['concept_fallen_empires'] that are allowed to spawn in the galaxy."​


The text for the generated tooltip is defined by the concept name you defined earlier, and by default, will use the base concept name _desc. Aliases let you reuse _desc text easily.

concept_fallen_empire: "Fallen Empire"​
concept_fallen_empires: "Fallen Empires"​
concept_fallen_empires_desc: "Fallen Empires are ancient precursor civilizations that start with advanced technology and powerful fleets, but are generally passive. At times they may make demands or offer tasks to lesser empires.\n\nProvoking a Fallen Empire is risky unless you are confident in your ability to defeat a challenging opponent."​


If desired, you can make it show something other than the base concept name as the Cyan tooltip. For example, here we wanted the Unity symbol to also count for the mouseover tooltip. (Tip: Use non-breaking spaces so the mouseover region sticks together if you do this!)

concept_edict: "Edict"​
concept_edicts: "Edicts"​
concept_edicts_desc: "Edicts are empire-wide decisions that can be enacted by spending resources or paying a monthly upkeep. These typically cost ['concept_unity', £unity£ $concept_unity$] or are paid for using the ['concept_edict_fund'], but some Edicts may cost other resources."​
​
concept_edict_fund: "Edict Fund"​
concept_edict_fund_desc: "The Edict Fund is a separate and static pool of £unity£ §IUnity§! for §IEdict§! upkeep.\n\nIf upkeep exceeds the size of the Fund, regular £unity£ §IUnity§! will also be used.§!"​


Concept text can itself have additional further concepts within it.

concept_technology: "Technology"​
concept_technologies: "Technologies"​
concept_technology_desc: "Technologies unlocked by research are one of the primary ways to increase your empire's strength in Stellaris, and fall into three fields of study:\n\n$t$['concept_physics_research', £physics£ $concept_physics_research$]\n$t$['concept_society_research', £society£ $concept_society_research$]\n$t$['concept_engineering_research', £engineering£ $concept_engineering_research$]\n\nThe most common sources of §IResearch Points§! are from £pops£ §IPops§! working in §IResearch Labs§! or from §IResearch Stations§! built in space above appropriate deposits."


We've added a few new text colors to fonts.gfx that we use exclusively for Concept tooltips. While §K and §I are identical to §H and §Y, they're separate in case we want to change them.

C = { 33 232 208 } # C = Cyan, Used for Concept Text that generates another tooltip.​
K = { 251 170 41 } # K = Header for Concepts. Currently identical to H.​
I = { 247 252 52 } # I = Highlights for Concepts. Currently identical to Y.

[/expand]
[h3]Next Week​[/h3]

Next week we’ll start going through the main features we’ll be adding in Gemini, and (hopefully) some details on our planned 3.8.0 Gemini Open Beta.

Tofu’s been studying.

3.7.4 patch released (checksum fc72)

by PDX-Loke

Hello,

While you were busy upgrading cloaked fleets at enemy starbases and buying multiple galatrons, the team has kept on fixing and tweaking.
The 3.7.4 patch is ready and available for download now.

Please find the patch notes below.

[h3]STELLARIS 3.7.4 PATCH NOTES[/h3]

BALANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS
  • Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a "close call" when nuclear war threatens to break out.
  • Payback Origin

    • If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you
    • The Debt collectors won't bug you anymore if you're currently at war with the MSI
    • Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can't vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires
    • Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals
    • Payback origin: fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire
    • Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire
    • Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
  • Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
  • Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
  • Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
  • The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  • The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
  • Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.


BUG FIXES
  • The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk)
  • Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components
  • Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet
  • It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries
  • Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
  • Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn't reattach itself to the galaxy.
  • Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
  • Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
  • Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
  • Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
  • Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don't own First Contact
  • Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
  • Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
  • Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
  • AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
  • Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
  • Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
  • Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
  • Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
  • Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
  • Fix crash when a species doesn't have a valid archetype
  • Removed ability to use the "reveal yourself" diplomatic action while you're already revealing yourself
  • Pre-FTL agreements like "give technology" now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring
  • Blocked "Salacious Affair" envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds
  • Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases
  • Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
  • Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
  • If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
  • Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC
  • Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
  • Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
  • Made it so you can't get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn't allow for espionage.
  • Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
  • Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
  • Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
  • Fixed a crash when loading old savegames
  • Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.


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

If you have an important game going you would like to finish, please back up the save file before trying to load it in the new version.
You can roll back to a prior version by opening steam and 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 #291 - First Contact is Out, What’s Next?

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

It’s now been a bit over a week since the First Contact Story Pack released, and it’s been great hearing your stories and experiences.

While some things slipped through into the initial release, like the Great Filter becoming nigh impenetrable if nobody’s watching, overall Canis Minor was the most stable release we’ve ever had on Stellaris - to the point where red flags were being raised whether the Crash Reporter was working properly.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A couple of days ago we pushed the 3.7.3 hotfix to take care of a few of the more pressing issues.

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.3 PATCH NOTES
Fixes and Changes
  • Every single atomic pre-FTL will no longer nuke themselves if they are not being observed.
  • Fixed Contingency worlds not being properly cracked by devolving beam.
  • The Solarpunk Empire will no longer stay pre-FTL if you decide to steal from them.
  • Admirals should no longer be able to gain both versions of the trickster trait.
  • The Solarpunk empire will no longer gain a new fleet every single month.
  • Fixing custom diplomatic action sounds playing for unrelated empires.
  • Missing localizations are added in English. Proper translations are expected with the following patch.
  • Fallen empire buildings should no longer disappear when you conquer their planets.
  • The Ministry of Culture should no longer disappear after you finish building it.
  • The Artist Enclave should no longer offer to sell you a Ministry of Culture if you already bought one.
  • Non-Xenophobe empires can once again enable displacement purging.
  • The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier is now granted to the subject towards the overlord instead of to the overlord towards the subject.
  • Randomly generated machine empires now have a chance to use the toxoid machine options if you own the corresponding DLC
  • Removed a TODO Opinion Modifier String.
  • Fixed Broken Shackles offering Payback information about the MSI even if they got already destroyed
  • Fixed a bug when cloaked ship cannot progress special project inside closed borders
  • Admiral doesn't get killed anymore when you upgrade the MSI flagship
  • Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.
  • The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  • Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  • You can no longer select the Fear of the Dark version of the Sol system without the Fear of the Dark origin.
  • Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  • Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  • Fix being able to build an observation post over Haven using the fleet order button
  • The Accepted Plea for Protection opinion modifier now grants +150 opinion.
  • The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.


We’re currently working on another patch, planned for a few weeks from now, to resolve more bugs, balance issues, and add some localization fixes.

So far, some items of particular interest include:

STELLARIS ‘CANIS MINOR’ 3.7.4 SNEAK PEEK

  • Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
  • Gave the Grand Herald archaeo-tech components.
  • Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.
  • The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
  • Hive-Minds with both Cordycepic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.


Please keep posting bug reports in our forums, they’re a great help to us.

Speaking of other reports that are a great help, and since I mentioned the Crash Reporting tool earlier, I have a message to share from our Tech Lord.

The Tech Lord Speaks​


Hey, I am Lorenzo, your friendly neighborhood Tech Lord. I just wanted to spend a second talking about releases and the work that we do behind the scenes once a new shiny version of the game is there, downloading. Game development is no joke, like any other business, and releasing a new patch is not the beginning of the end, but barely the end of the beginning. Our team puts heroic effort into delivering the best product to you, but hey, mistakes or oversights happen. Sometimes the result is a hilarious bug, like the tendency of pre-FTL societies to prematurely end their lives by nuclear means. Sometimes the result is this dreaded window.



Like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no patch survives contact with the players. But we are aware of this, and every time we release a new patch, somewhere in our offices there’s a group of developers sitting down, constantly monitoring the stability of the game, patiently waiting for the inevitable fire to spark: luckily most of the time there’s no real fire, just some tiny candle flames.

And this brings me straight to my point: thank you all for your reports! When you press that “send button”, detailed information on the crash are collected and sent to us for investigation. This info is usually enough to point out the problem, but often not enough to identify the cause of it: that’s when your comments come into play! Tell us what you were doing when the crash happened, even the most tiny detail could help us!

They say that an image is worth 1000 words: let me tell you a beautiful story in four acts with an image, then:

(Thanks from the bottom of my heart, anonymous player: your reports were immensely useful in finding the issue and fixing it )

Thanks, Lorenzo, and thanks again to all of you that submit detailed bug reports and crash logs. The more information we have, the easier it is to track down some of these sometimes troublesome issues.

Want to help out?​


We currently have two ways that you can help out improving the Stellaris experience for existing players, new players, and directly effect development of the game!

Since Alfray Stryke has finished his duties with First Contact, and has transitioned back to the Custodian team, he is currently running a feedback thread looking for constructive, directed feedback on AI Diplomatic interactions.

Originally posted by Stryke
We are looking for feedback on the AI's willingness to accept diplomatic pacts, become subjects or overlords and form federations, in particular with other AI empires. Some of the changes for 3.8 “Gemini” we are considering are requiring a Trust threshold for the AI to offer certain diplomatic agreements and improvements on the AI weights for Diplomatic traditions.


You can find the feedback thread here!

The other way to help influence the development of Stellaris, is a survey from our User Research department. This survey is designed to give us feedback on what you like/dislike about Stellaris, and will be taken into account while we're planning future development for Stellaris.

You can complete the survey here!

First Contact Art Competition​


Always able to be relied on for questionable puns, the Stellaris Community team announced our StellARTis Competition yesterday! Leave your First Contact-inspired artwork in this forum thread, for a chance to win a code for First Contact or a copy of Stellaris to give to a friend! Contest runs until April 3rd, and the winning entries will be chosen by the Stellaris Art Department!

So What’s Next?​

We’re not quite ready to talk about 3.8 ‘Gemini’ yet, but here’s a peek at one thing we’re going to start rolling out in it.

SPOILER: 3.8 SPOILERS Nesting Concepts will initially only be present in Galaxy Settings

Next week we’ll be going over more of the things planned to go into the 3.7.4 patch. See you then!