Stellaris News

Extra-Galactic Hordes of Undead have been detected infesting the cores of galaxies across the multiverse! From now, until November 1st, participate in fighting back the Necroid Invasion on the Stellaris Official Discord for a chance to win cool prizes, and shop on Steam to get great deals on Stellaris and Stellaris DLCs!

Check out our Steam Scream Fest Darkest Timeline Bundle and get a great start on your Stellaris Collection!
Bundle Includes:

• Stellaris
  
• Nemesis
  
• Apocalypse
  
• Necroids

"The void is dark and full of dangers; somewhere between the stars, the Lords of the Dead are stirring. Their fate - and that of the galaxy - is in your hands with this horrifying bundle!"

[h2]How does Survival Mode work?[/h2]

The first step is to Subscribe to the Necroid Invasion mod and add it to your mod playlist. The Necroid Invasion will spawn in the Galactic Core. The Undead are a crisis that will affect the entire galaxy. Every 5 years, they will build up enough psychic energy to control a wave of ships. This wave of ships will then attack all the empires in the galaxy and grows increasingly stronger as the game progresses. Your only hope is to survive long enough that the invasion exhausts their psychic energy and falls dormant.

[h2]That’s it?[/h2]

But wait, there’s more! Starting today we will be running a Necroid Invasion tournament! Fight back the Undead Invaders with up to 11 other players in Community-hosted multiplayer sessions. The top 36 players (by Victory Score) will progress to the semi-finals, with 4 players from each of those games advancing to the streamed final.

The top 3 scoring players in the Finals will receive a copy of Overlord and Toxoids! The top 6 scoring players in the final will be invited to a sit-down with some of the Stellaris Devs!

[h2]Two Ways to Win[/h2]

There are two ways to win prizes during this event: Join the discord, and get the Necroid Hunter role. Winners will be randomly selected from those that have the role on November 1st. The other way is to compete in the Necroid Invasion Mod Tournament!

[h3]Join on Discord to Win[/h3]

Join the Official Stellaris Discord and (after agreeing to the rules) go to #join-the-tournament, click the reaction and you’re entered for a chance to win one of five copies of base-game Stellaris! (Note: You must remain a member of the discord until the event concludes in order to be eligible.)

[h3]Play in the Tournament to Win[/h3]

• Subscribe to the Necroid Invasion mod here
• Join the Official Stellaris Discord
• React in #join-the-tournament

There you can find a schedule of planned games, or host your own! As well as find out further details on the tournament structure.

written by Eladrin, Mr. Cosmogone and Monzun

We have a few things for you today. First, Mr. Cosmogone will delve into the mysteries of the Shroud, then Monzun will show off a new accessibility feature, and finally I’ll give some updates on the Orion Open Beta.



Salutations mortals!

Mr. Cosmogone, high speaker of the Instrument of Desire, here to share tantalizing tidbits about the upcoming Covenants rework.

First of, a little bit of context for those among you unfamiliar with Covenants: currently in the game, after completing your Psionic ascension, you are granted access to the Shroud, a mystical dimension where all psionics draw power from.

Upon exploring the Shroud, you encounter random events, one of which would let you make a bargain with an eldritch entity. This would give you an empire modifier, and every 25 years or so, there would be a price to pay.

The new ascension rework (currently testable in our open beta) made it so that at the end of the tradition tree you would get a shot at forming a covenant without having to explore the Shroud so much.

I liked both these things, but felt that we could go a little further with this.

We are only ants feeding off crumbs

In the rework, upon first attempting to breach the Shroud, you will get a chance to form a covenant with one of the current entities, chosen semi randomly (the chances vary depending on your ethics, civics, traditions, APs and more). You can refuse them and venture in the Shroud on your own, but accepting will give you a weaker version of the current covenant modifiers.

I’m sure nothing can go wrong

A while later, you will be prompted to confirm the Covenant. Refusing removes your patron and their modifier, but accepting will give you a situation log entry about the covenant, and you will slowly start increasing in covenant rank as your empire attunes telepathically to its patron.

Every patron provides different bonuses, but they follow the same structure:

• Upon forming the covenant: weak empire modifier.
  
• Upon confirmation: Telepath jobs now provide pop growth, naval cap, amenities or research.
  
• After 5ish years: Telepath jobs bonus becomes stronger, gain access to an empire unique building providing more telepath jobs and unique bonuses.
  

After 15ish years: the weak empire modifier is replaced with a stronger one.



After 30ish years: One of your leaders can be selected to become Chosen, becoming immortal, and gaining a unique leader trait, with effects varying depending on your patron and the leader’s class. This does not block you from getting the Chosen One trait when venturing into the Shroud, and they can even be stacked together if luck is on your side!



After 50ish years, you reach the last stage of the covenant, and gain access to a unique patron specific ship component.



Here is a detailed table with all the bonuses:



The speed at which you progress is based on how well your ethics, traditions, civics, AP and actions match with your patron. On average, it should take you about 50 years to fully attune to your patron and unlock all the benefits of your covenant. Progress is voluntarily hidden. You’re dealing with eldritch entities after all.

There will of course be a price to pay, and many of the current events have been changed to provide additional variety and hopefully be more balanced.

To accommodate these changes, a couple things have moved around in the psionic tradition tree:



Lastly, for those among you who wish to pick a specific patron, an option has been added to the Shroud, where instead of venturing into the Shroud, you can pay a hefty amount of Zro to attempt to contact a specific entity. This entity may or may not be happy to see you and willing to make a bargain at this time, but in case of failure, you can try again as many times as you want until you get your patron of choice.

He who controls the Zro...

As a side note, the End of the Cycle has not been touched by the rework, but still has a chance to show up at any point where you try to contact an entity



Hello, I'm Monzun, one of the programmers on the Custodian team and I'm here to tell you about the extended Text-to-Speech(TTS) functionality being added in this update!

If you navigate to the accessibility tab in the settings menu, you will find an option simply titled "Text to Speech".



Enabling this will add a small button to certain interfaces in the game where there is a significant amount of text and clicking it will have the text read out loud by your operating system default TTS voice.



The purpose of this is primarily to allow players who struggle with reading long texts, to enjoy the quite sizable amount of written content in Stellaris.

What we would like to know now is:

• If you are one of the people who often skip out on reading text content even though you feel that you would be interested in what it says; was this helpful and/or convenient for you?
  
• Was there a point in the game where you missed having access to TTS readouts of written text?
  
• What do you think about the fact that TTS keeps reading, even though you've closed the window that contained the text being read?
  
• Did TTS actually read the text you expected it to read and did you notice any TTS related bugs?
  

Keeping to my style of primarily communicating through bullet point lists, here's some additional information about TTS in Stellaris.

• Pressing the TTS button again will stop the current reading.
  
• You can open the pause menu(esc) at any point while TTS is reading text in order to make it stop. This is useful if you've already closed the window containing the text and you don't want TTS to continue reading.
  
• The voice used is governed by your operating system default language, so changing the ingame language will not change the TTS voice language.
  
• The voice generation itself is handled by your operating system, which means that there may be cases where things sound sub-optimal, but where we cannot address this by adjusting the system itself.
  
• TTS is not available on Linux.
  
• Great care should be taken not to feed TTS text pertaining to the individual freedoms of synthetic lifeforms.
  

We hope that this addition will be helpful and I'm looking forward to reading what you think about it!


Many thanks to the tens of thousands of you that have been playing in the Orion Open Beta, and extra cheers to all of you that have provided feedback in the threads.

We’ve added another feedback thread for Text-to-Speech and have also made a few updates based on the first week.

[h3]Stellaris 3.6.0 ‘Orion’ Open Beta Updates to Patch Notes[/h3]
[expand]
[h3]Beta Updates[/h3]

• Adjusted references to missiles for all modules and sections that now use torpedos
  
• Combat Artillery and Carrier combat computers now use the new maintain_range combat behavior, which attempts to back off if at less than roughly half their desired range.
  
• Cordyceptic Lithoid Empires will no longer start with farmers, they will get food from another source.
  
• Cordyceptics can now build their starbase building inside Amor Alveo. They will also now support and oppose conservation acts properly in the GalCom
  
• Fixed a number of tooltips for Ascension Traditions
  
• Null Void beams no longer count as space fauna weapons.
  
• Minimum range is now shown for all weapons, not just those with a minimum range greater than zero.
  
• Hit and Run doctrine now provides +2 Disengagement Opportunities rather than +1.
  
• Admirals now grant their fleet +1 Disengage Opportunity at levels 5 and 10.
  
• Ships once again begin to disengage at 50% hull (rather than 25%).
  
• Fixed an error in Size Damage Scaling that crippled empires that used weapons with values less than one. (The Unbidden and friends should be less of a cakewalk.) This was also causing these weapons to be undercosted when calculating military power.
  
• Extradimensional Anchors and Portals now have a shield hardening aura for allies in that system.
  
• Increased the base damage of Flak PD.
  
• Decreased the base damage of explosive torpedoes.
  
• Increased the range of Energy Siphons.
  
• Mining lasers are now classified as Brawling weapons. Refire rate and general stats have been adjusted.
  
• Renamed "Bar" galaxies to "Barred Spiral" for accuracy.
  
• Adjusted text for various ship roles.
  
• Frigates now have an additional Utility slot.
  
• Torpedoes more reliably fire on the initial charge.
  
• The Ascensionist civics now correctly require the Utopia DLC.
  
• The Ascensionists civic now also reduces the additional cost of traditions from empire size by 25%.
  
• Budding is no longer mutually exclusive with Vat Grown.
  
• Polymelic is now mutually exclusive with all versions of Budding.
  
• Fixed AI weight for Synthetic Ascension
  
• Buffed Roboticist Cyborg Assembly to 2.25 per job
  
• Sartup Message updated to include information about this week's changes, and link to the forum discussion threads.
  
• Synthetic Evolution special project now converts all non-robotic, non-livestock pops that are not being purged to synths.
  
• Synthetic Assimilation now requires that the Synthetic Evolution project has been completed.
  
• Machine intelligences that have completed synthetic traditions should now get the synthetic trait on new leaders.
  
• Removed check that prevented synthetic assimilation of robots and machines.
  
• Clarified a number of tooltips.
  
• Reduced Cyborg trait upkeep to 0.3 energy per trait and removed it entirely from basic resource traits.
  
• Rebalanced basic resource cyborg traits to give +10% instead of +15%
  
• Modular Cybernetics tradition now lets regular empires use robot modification points for cyborg modification, driven assimilators use machine modification points for cyborg modification and gives hive minds +10% pop assembly.
  
• Rebalanced some genetics traditions by redistributing the species modification points.
  
• Fixed tooltip for Genetic traditions regarding hive-mind assimilation.
  
• Decreased the building and district upkeep penalty from the malfunctioning reactor on colonisable shattered ring segments and made it only target energy.
  
• Cyborg rulers now give building and district upkeep and reduce empire size from districts.
  
• Moved the +1 trait pick from Modular Cybernetics to Integrated Anatomy.
  
• Fixed tooltips relating to assimilation of hive-minds.
  
• Driven Exterminators should now be able to assimilate other machines after taking Synthetic traditions.
  
• Slightly nerfed Efficient Cloning to give +1.5 assembly instead of +3
  
• Clarified tooltips for hive-mind and machine authorities and driven assimilator civic.
  
• Hrozgar of the Endless Flames will now befriend those that have finished Cybernetic or Synthetic traditions.
  
• Transgenesis techs now have double the draw weight.
  
• You can now psionically awaken cyborgs. Doing so removed any cybernetic implants they have.
  
• Installing cybernetic implants in a psionic species now prevents them from having any psionic abilities.
  
• Assimilation tooltips now state if they will remove psionic or cybernetic traits.
  
• Synthetic Evolution AP now requires Synthetic Workers instead of Droid Workers, in turn it grants Synthetic Personality Matrix as a research option. This means that Synthetic Personality Matrix is now obtainable by all regular empires again.
  
• The opener for Synthetic traditions for regular empires is now +1 max leader level and +25% leader xp gain.
  
• Synthetic leaders are no longer locked behind Synthetic ascension.
  
• The Synthetic Age tradition now requires the Synthetic Personality Matrix tech.
  
• Blocked Politics traditions for homicidal empires
  
• Renamed several Genetic traditions
  

[h3]Feature[/h3]

• Added Text To Speech support
  
• Covenant Rework: Get more from Shroud patrons over time. New modifiers, telepath bonuses, buildings, ship components and leader traits.
  
• Patronless empires can expend Zro upon entering the Shroud to try to contact a specific patron.
  

[h3]Improvements[/h3]

• Added filter and status icon for terraforming candidate in expansion planner view
  
• Added terraforming candidate icon to galaxy map and system view.
  
• Added tooltip for Detox saying how many Toxic TCs you have within your borders
  

[h3]AI[/h3]

• AI will now value you offering them fleets.
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Halved the culture worker modifiers for Egalitarians, Xenophobes and Xenophiles. Doubled the culture worker modifier for Pacifists.
  
• Made Zro Distillation more likely to appear if you have a Shroudwalker teacher.
  
• Replaced Bulwark defence platform cost and upkeep reductions with inherent shield and armor hardening as they level up.
  
• Strategic resource planetary automation will no longer fill fortress designation planets with refineries instead of strongholds
  
• Certain technologies (namely those in the Apocalypse tech file) are no longer cheaper than other technologies in the same tier.
  
• Decreased Missile Accuracy from 100% to 85%
  

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Empires released by those that have the Divine Sovereign civic will no longer inherit the Divine Sovereign civic.
  
• Percentage based hull, armor, and shield regen modifiers now show their values correctly. (As +1% rather than +0.01%)
  
• Fix to strike crafts flying far below the fleet during combat.
  
• Defense platforms no longer sails away when in combat with enemies too far away to engage them.
  

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Fixed last_added_deposit
  
• If you add too many options in an archaeology site or first contact, it now adds a scrollbar for those that don't fit in the interface
  

[/expand]

The Open Beta should already be updated with these changes!

Go forth and keep providing feedback!

Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.

Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.

Galactic strategiser Stellaris is inviting players to muck about with adjustments to the game’s combat this month in an open beta, starting today. The beta is running from now until the end of October to trial planned changes and rummage up some feedback for Stellaris’ next update, 3.6 Orion. Don’t worry if you just fancy playing regular Stellaris; this is an opt-in thing. You can find out more by watching the video below.

Read more

written by Eladrin

Hello again!

This week’s topic is the combat rebalancing planned for the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” update. We’ll begin with an exploration of the goals and intended scope of the changes, and then go into detail regarding what we’ve done.

[h2]Scope and Intentions[/h2]
We first discussed the combat balancing back in Dev Diary #257, and then provided some more information on our early work at PDXCon. Since then, we’ve done more experimentation and gathered some feedback before making more iterative changes.

When we started thinking about doing the Combat Rebalancing experiment, we had to decide what it was, and perhaps just as importantly, what it was not.

[h2]Goals[/h2]

We decided that the primary goals were to:

• Shake up the meta and improve general space combat, while maintaining a limited scope.
  
• Provide benefits to having mixed fleets rather than unihull.
  
• Using the 3D Assets that we have, improve counterplay and ship design options.

Containing the scope of these changes was considered critical - this is intended to be tightly focused on fleet composition and balance changes rather than a massive rewrite of how fleet combat works. We’re also not touching ground combat at this time.

[h2]Problems[/h2]

Some of the problems that we identified with fleet combat in Stellaris included:

• “Alpha strike” artillery battleships dominate the late game. We added a bit of rock-paper-scissors when we improved Strike Craft, but due to the way repeatable technologies interact with combat, eventually all that matters is who has longer range.
  
• Disengagement mechanics further encourage overkill.
  
• Ships like Destroyers and Cruisers fall out of effectiveness almost immediately. The Point Defense niche of Destroyers isn’t very valuable, and almost anything a Cruiser can do, a Battleship can do better.
  
• Command Limits don’t really do their intended jobs.
  
• Doomstacks aren’t fun.

The last two were deemed out of scope for this round of changes, and will be explored in future updates. We’re also not really touching repeatable technologies at this time, focusing instead on trying to provide useful roles for more ship sizes.

[h2]So What Did You Do?[/h2]

The biggest changes include:

• Ship Roles can now be selected to auto-design ships that actually fulfill certain roles, such as Artillery, Brawler, Torpedo, and so on. If you do not possess any weapons that fulfill the selected role, it’ll do its best with what you have.
  
• Torpedoes and select other weapons now gain a multiplicative damage bonus based on the size of the target.
  
• Missiles have been moved out of the G slot back into S and M.
  
• Energy Torpedoes such as Proton and Neutron Launchers have been changed into G class weapons with a minimum range. Damage has been adjusted to be balanced as a Torpedo class weapon, and like the new Torpedoes, they deal increased damage to larger targets. Unlike standard torpedoes, they remain instant hit weapons for now.
  
• A new ship size called the Frigate, an advanced Corvette frame that delivers torpedoes, but is slower and less evasive. It's unlocked with the Torpedo technology.
  
• Added a minimum range to all Large weapons except Lasers
  
• Note: Currently ships do not yet back off if all weapons are unable to fire due to range.
  
• Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other.
  
• Flak Batteries now more strongly counter Strike Craft, while Point Defense now more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes. Strike Craft are more reliant on Shields, Missiles and Torpedoes are more reliant on Armor. Due to their ability to bypass shields, Strike Craft are very effective against other Strike Craft.
  
• Ship combat computers now ignore certain weapons for desired range purposes, and base their desired distance on the actual loadout of the ship. "Swarm" and "Torpedo" behavior will charge in, "Picket" and "Line" behaviors will attempt to stay at the range of their median range weapons, and "Artillery" and "Carrier" will try to stay at the range of their longest ranged weapons.This generally increases the desire for ships to remain at range if possible.
  
• Ships now get a limited number of Disengagement Opportunities per combat. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll (except for Psi Jump Drives, which provide 2) once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
  
• Some sources of Evasion have been replaced with other effects.
  
• Everything else changed. Everything we know is wrong. Panic, and know despair.

View the full patch notes here.



The roles for different ship sizes should become more valuable. The introduction of size based damage make Frigates and Cruisers potentially very dangerous to Battleships and other large ships.

Frigates, however, are very vulnerable without a screen of Corvettes to protect them, Destroyers are the masters of Point Defense in Screen or cutting down those Corvettes and Frigates using the Gunship or Brawler roles.

Artillery ships are vulnerable if something closes under the range of their guns, but with a screen that engages the enemy further away, they are free to blast away.

Every ship role has a counter somewhere in the system, and mixed fleets that cover for deficiencies are thus generally much more difficult to hard-counter.





If you prefer to listen to a good summary, we have MordredViking here explaining everything using sounds made by flapping meat at us.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Words, Right?​[/h2]


A Torpedo Frigate​


Neutron Launchers and Missiles Cruiser


Different number of Aux Utility slots on the sterns.


That's going to hurt if it hits that Titan.


Shield and Armor Hardening counter Shield and Armor Penetration.
​
[h2]I Want To Try It and Provide Constructive Feedback!​[/h2]

Good, I was hoping you would.

As of the posting of this dev diary, the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” Open Beta should be live on Steam, and will run until the end of the month.

[h3]Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.

Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.[/h3]

[h3]Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.​[/h3]

As this build is still in “hot” and in development, expect to see many placeholder icons and TODO text here and there. Numbers are not necessarily final, and we’ll be looking at data gathered from the Open Beta to potentially make additional changes.

Known Issues:

• Many placeholder icons and some placeholder text.
  
• All new text will only be in English for the duration of the Open Beta.
  
• Ships do not currently back away if they are trapped within the minimum range of their weapons.

We expect to be making more changes and plan to update the beta at least once during the upcoming weeks.

Targeted feedback threads exist for the following topics:

• Fleet Combat Rebalancing
• Ascension Path changes (for those of you that have Utopia)
• Other 3.6 Feedback
• And we have a thread for general discussion of the Open Beta.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the Stellaris 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta!

Hello,

We have another patch ready for you all, addressing what we believe to be the remaining issues coming out of the 3.5 + Toxoids release.

Plus of course a plethora of tweaks and improvements also done by the team, relentlessly industrious as they are.

3.5.3 is available now for download!

[expand]
#################################################################
######################### VERSION 3.5.3 ##########################​
#################################################################

[h3]Improvements[/h3]

• You will no longer get alerts about envoys dying.
  
• AI will now research debris.
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Shared Burden now doubles the unity gained from the egalitarian faction.
  
• Ensured consistency in the Toxic God starting resources: the home system will now always contain a +3 alloys deposit. A nearby one will contain another +2 and a further +6 energy.
  
• Federation subjects that cannot vote can no longer persuade federation members that someone should not be invited into a federation
  
• Capped Noxious happiness bonus at 40%.
  
• Vassals that leave an overlord's war by a change in the agreement will now get a truce with every opponent.
  

[h3]Planet Automation[/h3]

• Removed out dated sector automation logic which was activated for planets when sector automation was enabled but planet automation was deactivated
  
• Clarified the tooltip explaining when planetary automation will create new jobs
  
• Planet Automation Crime module will now forbid enforcer jobs if you have 0 crime and allow enforcer jobs if you have more than 27 crime
  
• Added a Planet Automation setting which allows for construction even during resource deficits
  
• Changed how Planet Automation is presented in the Planet View to more clearly show that there are settings that the player can use
  

[h3]Bugfix[/h3]

• Fixed Toxoid presapients having Aquatic portraits.
  
• Fixed gateway tags not showing up in the solar system map.
  
• Fixed megastructure outliner right click not focusing on the megastructure (as is standard for other outliner objects).
  
• Fixed one of the outcomes of the Ancient Robot World arc site featuring visual bugs (placeholder model due to not having a correct graphical culture set).
  
• Updated tooltip for Mutagenic Spa to match values given by Bath Attendant jobs.
  
• All resolutions in the Galactic Market category now require the market to be formed in order to be proposed.
  
• Fixed farm appendages bonus from “Damn the Consequences” edict.
  
• Fixed low maintenance to be an actual bonus.
  
• Added the actual effect of Damn the Consequences to its effect tooltip.
  
• Fixed Situation modifiers not updating in some circumstances when you changed Approach or Stage.
  
• The Debris Field anomaly will now reliably fire an event when you research it.
  
• Fixed copy paste error in Toxoids 3 name list (male regnal names).
  
• Fixed the Toxic God branch office building not reliably boosting quest progress, depending on your chosen civics.
  
• Fixed radiotrophic simple drones for lithoid hive minds having their mineral upkeep increased instead of decreased.
  
• You can now only consecrate one habitat per activation of the Toxic Maw.
  
• Updated the tooltip for requiring additional activations of the Toxic Maw.
  
• The Prethoryn Brood Queen relic now correctly sets the relic activation cooldown timer.
  
• Machine Intelligence pops are now correctly purged again when conquered by an organic empire.
  
• Fixed Heritage Sites and Hypercomms Forums not converting to Pillar of Quietuses and Galactic Memorials respectively.
  
• Fixed an ungrammatical pronoun being used in one of the early Toxic Knights quests.
  
• The primitive habitats in Federation's End system are no longer in danger of being turned into barren worlds by asteroids.
  
• Fixed a stray “?” in the event where the Shroudwalker enclave is destroyed.
  
• Corrupt Survey Data event can no longer happen on planets with moons, as it would leave the moon orbiting nothing, and due to cost cuts we can assume that the holographic projection couldn't also cover the moon.
  
• Fixed the Toxic Knights end bugging out if you
• SPOILERS* using a mercenary fleet.
  
• Clarified the negative happiness impacts of the Noxious trait in a pop's happiness breakdown.
  
• Fixed misleading tooltip for why an AI will say no to your request to join their federation (it suggested they did not want to be a federation partner with a current member, but actually it meant that that member did not want to be a federation partner with you).
  
• Fixed Luminous Blades modifier stating it was a bit more effective than it actually was.
  
• Fixed megashipyards not benefitting from certain country-wide ship cost and build speed modifiers.
  
• Fixed cases where if a hive forced a regular empire to release a vassal with a status quo peace deal, the resulting empire would be a hive empire without hive pops. (Also fixed it for machines, and for the opposite case of regular empires attacking or machines).
  
• Added missing effect to the tooltip of the Psionic Archive relic.
  
• You can now once again apply species templates that would remove beneficial traits, so long as you were able to make the template a valid combination in the first place.
  
• Leader and envoy portraits now switch correctly after undergoing synthetic ascension.
  
• Science ship modifiers are no longer doubled in the tooltip.
  
• You should no longer be able to have multiple monuments on a single planet (again).
  
• Fixed issue where invalid research alternatives may be left in TechStatus after adding pre-learned technologies at start of game.
  
• Spiritualist Empires now care about Relentless Industrialism on their holy worlds.
  
• Chemical Bliss no longer states that it causes unemployed pops to produce unity.
  
• Fixed various crashes.
  

[h3]AI[/h3]

• Increased the monthly random chance that an AI will decide to start preparing for war.
  
• AI empires will now bring their assault armies towards the enemy during war preparation phase.
  
• Reduced the maximum AI war preparation period from 60 months to 30 months.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would use their "prepare for war" gather logic even during an ongoing war.
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI would try and gather their fleets for an upcoming war in a system which they could not access.
  
• Fixed AI sometimes not hiring enough scientists to keep researching.
  
• Fixed some cases where AI would inexplicably spam admirals.
  
• AI hive-mind will no longer destroy hive warrens.
  
• Fixed AI not allocating at least the desired_min to its budgets. Double-allocating resources is less risky than having it not be respected, as with the Influence budget there's a fair chance that the desired minimum may never be hit
  
• Improved AI's early game alloy expenditure (it wanted to put a lot into buildings even though most of the time none of the buildings cost alloys)
  
• Xenophile empires are now more likely to build trading hub type starbases, changed from materialists.
  
• Fixed issues with starbase module logic which made AI forbidden from building anything on certain starbases.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of resetting their move orders during hyperlane windup time.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI empires were not allowed to downgrade shipyard type starbases if they had an ongoing construction of ships which made AI empires have much more shipyards than intended.
  
• Fixed an issue where bombarding AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of flying between the starbase in the system and orbiting the bombardment target when they were waiting for assault armies to invade their bombardment target planet.
  
• Added additional logic for AI to merge fleets which are close to each other during wars to reduce the amount of small AI fleets.
  
• Fixed an issue where AI empires would incorrectly try and merge their assault armies together by using FTL reinforcement mechanic, causing their ground troops to be indefinitely stuck in MIA mode.
  
• Fixed several issues with AI regrouping logic where fleets would suicide one by one instead of grouping up together before attacking.
  
• AI empires who do not use food will no longer build hydroponics on starbases.
  

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Added show_in_outliner (default: yes) to determine whether a megastructure type should be shown in the outliner
  
• Specifying a "key" in a triggered modifier will now at least some of the time make the modifier have that key as its "name"
  
• Fixed the script profiler (previous results using it should be disregarded)
  
• Added ability for planet automation to forbid and allow jobs
  
• Added upgrade_trigger block for planet automation which allows for individual logic of when buildings should be allowed to be upgraded
  

[/expand]

Thanks for playing Stellaris!