Stellaris News

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Midsummer approaches, and with it, holidays.
[h3]Stellaris: Free to Play​[/h3]
We want you and your friends to have a reason to celebrate too. As we announced last week, Stellaris will be free to play on Steam from the 22nd to the 26th.

With the addition of Co-op (that is, up to five players playing as the same empire), there’s never been a better time to introduce your friends to Stellaris!

Remember, as host, your friends will have access to all of your DLC.



Stay tuned to our social media channels during the Free to Play event - they have plans.

[h3]Stellaris Nexus​[/h3]
Stellaris Nexus is a simultaneous turn-based multiplayer 4X game offering the full spectrum of a thrilling, strategic 4X experience. Choose a unique faction and leader and challenge up to 5 other players, plotting and battling your way to galactic dominance; all in about 1 hour.

As part of Steam Next Fest, it’s also playable for free until the 26th!


[h3]Community Designed Starter Pack​[/h3]
Hello! This is MordredViking, the Community Manager for Stellaris. We recently asked the community for their input on what DLCs to recommend to new players, and we thought we should share some of our findings.

We got 420 responses from you all, and among the questions we asked was, for how many hours had you played Stellaris? The answers ranged from a couple of hundred to a whopping 13,000! This came out to an average of 855 hours among all respondents. A pretty hardcore group!

The core of the questionnaire however, was of course which DLCs to recommend to a new Stellaris player, and here’s the top 10:



From these results, we wanted to have a bundle that provided a representative selection of available content, catering to a range of different play styles and fantasies. With this criteria and the survey results in mind, we settled on Utopia, Federations, Distant Stars and Synthetic Dawn.

Utopia allows for a broader range of empire choices, by providing new tools to develop the empire and ultimately allowing players to transform their nation into a paradise. Federations taps into a more diplomatic playstyle, and really ramps up the potential for in-game alliances and also enables power projection through bodies like the Galactic Council. Distant Stars entices eager explorers with new discoveries throughout the galaxy. Then finally, Synthetic Dawn brings those robot dreams to life with expanded robotic gameplay options.

[h3]What’s Next?​[/h3]

We will return with dev diaries on July 27th with Habitat discussions, and start going into detail regarding what’s planned for the 3.9 Caelum update.

Like 3.1 Lem, 3.3 Libra, and 3.6 Orion, Caelum will be a Custodian update focused on revisiting old packs, catching up on technical debt, and generally improving the game.

[h3]Spoiler: We Dug Up Some Lithoid Previews[/h3]
[expand]
The newly clarified Calamitous Birth tooltip.

The home crater gets a bit of a boost.

A minor tweak to the craters makes a big difference.

What do Lithoids eat?

Pom-a-granites!

Placeholder icons on the approaches.

Once you start feasting, it's really hard to stop.
Om nom nom.

[/expand]

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

[h3]STELLARIS 3.8.4 PATCH NOTES[/h3]
[expand]
############################################################​
#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################​
############################################################​

Balance

• Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  
• Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  
• Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  
• The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  
• Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  
• Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  
• The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  
• The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  
• Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.
  

AI

• Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  
• Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.
  

Bugfixes

• Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  
• Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  
• Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  
• Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  
• Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  
• Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  
• Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  
• Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  
• Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  
• Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  
• Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  
• Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  
• Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  
• Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  
• Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  
• Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  
• Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  
• Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  
• Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  
• Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  
• Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  
• Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.
  

Improvements

• Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  
• Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  
• Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.
  

UI

• Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  
• Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  
• Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  
• If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  
• Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  
• Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.
  

Modding

• Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  
• Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  
• Made reload_gui console command more stable
  

[/expand]

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)

[h3]Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​[/h3]

A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

[h3]Habitats and You​[/h3]

A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

[h3]Stellaris with a Twist[/h3]
Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.


If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

[h3]Free to Play Weekend​[/h3]
But wait, there's more!


What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play; there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord; from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!

Hello,

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

This should be the last of the 3.8 patches, although the teams work continues targeting later updates.

Please find the patch notes below.
3.8.4 "Gemini" Patch Notes
[expand]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################
############################################################

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  
• Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  
• Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  
• The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  
• Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  
• Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  
• The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  
• The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  
• Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.
  
• 
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  
• Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  
• Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  
• Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  
• Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  
• Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  
• Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  
• Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  
• Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  
• Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  
• Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  
• Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  
• Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  
• Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  
• Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  
• Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  
• Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  
• Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  
• Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  
• Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  
• Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  
• Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  
• Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  
• Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.
  

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  
• Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  
• Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  
• Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  
• Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  
• If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  
• Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  
• Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.
  

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  
• Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  
• Made reload_gui console command more stable
  

[/expand]

[h3]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.[/h3]

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Now that the 3.8.3 patch has been released, and it seems so far that multiplayer and co-op stability is in a pretty good state. We’re continuing work on a 3.8.4 release planned for a few weeks from now, to get some more fixes in before summer hits.

A few highlights include changes relating to ground combat collateral damage and bombardment (specifically Raiding Bombardment).

We’re reducing the amount of collateral damage ground units deal, as many invasions were destroying the colonies before the battle completed.

The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops will be dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 3 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony, so on a colony with three defending armies the last ten pops would be safe from raiding.)

Since next week is another short week in Sweden, our next dev diary will be on June 15th, though I may drop a little update with some more of the confirmed fixes planned for 3.8.4.

Now I’ll pass it over to MordredViking for some information on the community event that’s starting.

[h3]Stellaris with a Twist​[/h3]

Hello! I’m Mordred Viking, the Community Manager for Stellaris!

To celebrate Stellaris’ 7th anniversary, we’re running our Stellaris with a Twist event! Two of our favorite content creators will explore a galaxy, with objectives suggested by, and voted on, by you, the Community. These streams will run for the first three Wednesdays in June (June 7th, 14th and 21st), at 1500 CEST (UTC+1). Want more details on this event, and how you can get involved? Check out this forum post!

Each player will have a personal goal to achieve, plus they will have a joint goal. All the Content Creator goals will be crowdsourced from the Community. Goal suggestions are currently open, so you can leave your suggestions here. Be sure to watch our social media channels (or join us on Discord!), because voting will start on Friday and be active all weekend. On Monday we will announce the goals for the first stream on Wednesday, June 7th!


Subscribe to Ep3o and follow AlphaYangDelete!​

That's it for this week, folks! See you again on June 15th (or sooner)!

Hello,

Our latest patch is now live and ready for download.

Please find the patch notes below.

Enjoy!

STELLARIS 3.8.3 PATCH NOTES
[expand]
############################################################
#################### VERSION 3.8.3 ######################
############################################################

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• It is now possible to rename council positions by clicking on council position name in the council view.
  
• Added additional event chains to Under One Rule.
  
• Under One Rule now will take into account if the ruler was bad or good towards citizens.
  
• Added a checkbox to toggle automatic expansion of a sector in the sector editor
  
• Made the three different "Terraforming Candidate Discovered" events turn into messages if you have already found one before.
  
• The pre-sapients that worship the Beholder now have the Psionic trait.
  
• The Beholder's Psi-Inoculation process is now a pair of decisions to toggle it on and off, instead of a decision to be enacted for each pop you want to become psionic.
  
• The Animator of Clay has blessed the corroded one.
  
• Imperial Heirs will now be more likely to adopt the class of the current ruler if you have the Philosopher King civic.
  
• Imperial heirs will now have their chosen class weighted by civics and traditions that give bonuses to specific leader classes.
  
• Added the Reorganize Council agenda, which allows reselection of unlocked council positions without the need to reform the government.
  
• Beholder now has a recruitment event, and Azaryn's recruitment event has a couple more options
  
• Added a checkbox in the army tab of the planet view to control if a planet is used via the sector army builder or not
  
• Added scroll wheel speed settings
  
• Leaders in the leader pool that start with a negative trait, now correctly gets one less additional negative trait during their lifespan.
  
• For players without Galactic Paragons, leaders will more often get traits that match if they're assigned as councilors or not.
  
• Increased the age span of new leaders, but weighted towards the middle. Initial Leaders will now also be roughly the same age as pool leaders.
  
• The edict fund is now shown in the council view.
  
• Imperial empires can now crown a Chosen One to be the Divine Sovereign if the Chosen One is the current ruler or heir.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Legendary leaders do not count towards Leader Capacity.
  
• The Eager trait now has an additional effect: these leaders will not contribute towards Leader Capacity until they reach level 4. Assigned some event spawned leaders the Eager (II) trait.
  
• Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your leader cap.
  
• XP Penalties for going over leader capacity have been reduced. The LEADER_CAPACITY_XP_SCALE define has been added for modders to be able to easily adjust this number.
  
• Military fleets led by an Admiral can now explore unsurveyed hyperlanes. (This does not permit Admirals to survey planets, anomalies, or wormholes.)
  
• Admirals no longer give Fleet Command Limit based off of their level.
  
• Researching Galactic Administration now removes the cooldown for government reform, this was previously only done if you obtained it via Statecraft traditions.
  
• Rebalanced many traditions and ascension Perks.
  
• Opener for Aptitude traditions now gives +1 trait, moved from the Finisher. This is retroactively applied to leaders that have been hired or are in your leader pool.
  
• The Empire Needs You now gives -25% Leader Hire Cost instead of +1 Leader Capacity.
  
• Specialist Training now gives +25% Leader XP Gain.
  
• Psychological Profiling now gives -25% Leader Upkeep Cost in addition to -1 Max Negative Traits.
  
• Healthcare Program now gives +20 Leader Lifespan instead of +10 Leader Lifespan.
  
• Aptitude Finisher now gives +1 Leader Capacity and +1 Leader Trait Pick options instead of +1 trait.
  
• Science Division now gives -10% Scientist Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Scientist XP Gain.
  
• Polytechnic Education now gives +10% Leader XP gain instead of +20%.
  
• Colonial Viceroys now gives -10% Governor Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Governor XP Gain.
  
• War Games now gives -10% Admiral Cost and Upkeep instead of +20% Admiral XP Gain.
  
• Mind and Body now gives +10 Leader Lifespan instead of +20 Leader Lifespan.
  
• Finisher effect for Statecraft now grants Galactic Administration as a research option with 25% progress instead of giving the tech for tree.
  
• Resistance is Frugal now also gives -10% General Cost and Upkeep.
  
• Imperial Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity in addition to its existing effects.
  
• Transcendent Learning Prerogative now gives +2 Leader Capacity, +1 Leader Pool Size and +33% Leader XP gain.
  
• Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels. Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level (and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level)
  
• Guardian trait maximum effect is now +33% Defense Platform Damage and Hull Points.
  
• Frontier Spirit trait maximum effects changed to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +50% Colonization Speed and +1 starting pop for colonies.
  
• Cyborg generals now increase planetary combat width.
  
• Reduced passive experience gain by 30% for Progenitor Hive leaders from level 1-6 and 50% for Progenitor Hive leaders between 7-10.
  
• Gray Eminence destiny trait now reduces the effects of empire size, instead of reducing empire size directly. Updated Aturion Efficiency to match Gray Eminence.
  
• Now imperial rulers do not lose imperial heir trait, so they don't become worse when they take over the country.
  
• Lowered the spawn chance for the legendary paragon Keides by 75%.
  
• Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.
  
• Now criminals are also unhappy when under oppressive autocracy civic
  
• Kai-Sha's "Expanded Contact Network" event will now upgrade her Shady Contacts trait if she already has it. And gives intel on other empires if it has already been maxed out.
  
• Replaced -20% Empire Size reduction for Aturion Efficiency trait with -10% Empire Size Penalty.
  
• Leader traits that have base resource production now produce the market equivalent of 8 energy/month for tier 1 and 24 energy/month for tier.
  
• Aggressor admiral sub-class now gives +7.5% weapon damage.
  
• Artillerist II trait now gives +7.5% tracking.
  
• Fortifier trait now scales between -5% Starbase upgrade cost and -5% Defense platform cost at tier 1 to -10% Starbase upgrade cost, -10% Defense platform cost, +5% Starbase hullpoints and +5% Defense platform hullpoints at tier 3.
  
• Armada Logistician trait ship upkeep maximum reduction is now -10%.
  
• Military Pioneer trait maximum effects are now +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  
• Guerilla Tactician now gives a flat 10 Evasion instead of a +50% Evasion multiplier.
  
• Architect of War now gives -10% Military Ship Cost.
  
• Charisma trait now has a maximum Edict Upkeep reduction of -10%
  
• Removed -5% Military Ship Cost from the Strategist sub-class
  
• Geological Consultant trait maximum effect reduced to 9 months of unity per blocker removed.
  
• Retired Fleet Officer trait maximum effects reduced to +20% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  
• Agrarian Upbringing trait now checks for country_uses_food = yes instead of being biological.
  
• Shipwright maximum effects reduced to +10% Ship Build Speed and -10% Ship Build Cost.
  
• Frontier Spirit maximum effects reduced to -10% Colony Ship Cost and +45% Colonization Speed.
  
• Architectural Sense maximum effects reduced to -10% Buildings and Districts Cost, -5% Buildings and District Upkeep, +25% Planetary Build Speed.
  
• Experimenter trait now gives a maxium of 2×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  
• Explorer trait maximum effects reduced to -10% Science Ship Cost and +25% Anomaly Research Speed.
  
• Expansionist maximum effects reduced to -10% Outpost Alloy and Influence Cost.
  
• Great Researcher trait now gives 5×Leader Level Research Points per month.
  
• Taskmaster trait XP reduced from 600 to 500. In return it now has soldiers produce 2/2/2 Energy/Minerals/Food (for countries that use food) or 3/3 Energy/Minerals (for countries that don't)
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Under One Rule now changes to Imperial Authority when transitioning to Galactic Emperor or Psionic Sovereign.
  
• Intellectual Espionage trait now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Expanded Hive Warren would get deleted if there was no remaining unupgraded Hive Warrens on the planet
  
• Updated all researcher jobs to check for Academic Recruiter.
  
• Increased the army upkeep from Disorder II trait.
  
• Chainbreaker trait now requires Egalitarian ethics.
  
• Honored Warmaster trait now requires Xenophile ethics.
  
• Commented out cut prospecting decision.
  
• Kidnapper trait now checks that the general's owner allows slavery instead of checking their ethics.
  
• Taskmaster trait no longer gives an undocumented +5% Building Speed per soldier job.
  
• Now you can't terraform with Azaryn without launching her special ability.
  
• The Death of a Great Leader event should no longer fire when you send a leader off to the Keepers of Knowledge.
  
• Cloaked Ships will no longer block starbases from being rebuilt.
  
• Moved gestalt nodes further apart from each other in the council view so that trait picking doesn't get blocked when they have a lot of traits.
  
• The planet visuals should now update properly when planets change class
  
• Fixed an issue where traits given via event options would not correctly display triggered effects
  
• The ambience sound effect played in the council view is now properly affected by the ambience volume slider
  
• Fixed an issue where leaders that changed empires would retain their council position in their old empire
  
• Updated all researcher jobs to check for leader_trait_academia_recruiter
  
• Fixed a bug where modding the species appearance would not apply to the ruler
  
• leader_trait_industrial_espionage now takes into account all researcher category jobs on the planet.
  
• The Scholarium Investigator leader trait now gives +25% Assist Research Efficiency instead of failing to give 10% Research Speed as a non-council trait.
  
• Fixed a COOP bug where it was possible for several players to unlock council positions at the same time resulting in duplicates
  
• If there is a wormhole in the capital system, then the Keides wormhole will spawn in a random neighboring system 1-2 jumps away
  
• Cordyceptic Stargazers now correctly spawn with an amoeba fleet again.
  
• Fixed Eager Explorer empires spawning with an extra scientist.
  
• Slaves are now properly set under dystopian living standard
  
• Any Gestalt empire generated after game start (e.g. from machine uprising) should now correctly get their Gestalt council nodes.
  
• Hyperdrive technologies no longer show duplicated icons.
  
• Fixed issues where starbase modifiers would apply to defensive platforms when they shouldn't
  
• Fixed an issue where pre FTL empires spawned from the necrophage origin would spawn in orbit of their planet
  
• Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
  
• Zroni Relic will now add 1 level to the leader, but won't choose trait on random it will be up to player to chose the trait.
  
• Fixed notification map ping staying visible for some time after dismissing the notification.
  
• Fixed a bug where some traits would not properly localize their names when their modifiers are part of tooltips
  
• Fixed a bug where the Insightful trait tooltip would duplicate headers for its effects
  
• Fixed an issue where it was not possible to unassign envoys from their current task
  
• Fixed Resilient trait to properly adjust for synths. Did the same for destiny trait which was giving leader life span
  
• Crusader Spirit Opinion Modifier: Now it gives -80 opinion towards everyone of different ethic and +20 to the same ethic empires
  
• Fixed issues with the fleet manager where the buttons to increase and decrease the number of ships would not work correctly when using shift or ctrl modifiers
  
• Rogue Scientist event chain shouldn't trigger for Governors assigned as Head of Science.
  
• Updated some trigger loc from "No of ..." to "Number of ..." to be more consistent with the rest of the game.
  
• Fixed Tooltip for Paranoid Leader Trait
  
• Fixed title case for anomaly.3141 "The Depths of Alien Life"
  
• The event that allows you to pick a Chosen One no longer says "three individuals" are capable of absorbing such power and proceeds to list four names.
  
• Events that give the Chosen traits now check that the leader in question is psionic.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could reinforce a fleet when the template was not filled with the correct ships even though the fleet was filled on command limit
  
• Fixed the spawn chance modifier of the anomaly The Orb, as it could not spawn before.
  
• Beholder planetfall error message now states that an empty building slot is required.
  
• Fixed icon for brainslug species trait again.
  
• You can no longer psi-inoculate hive-minded pops or those being purged.
  
• Fallen empire capital planets should now have the correct planetary designation.
  
• You can no longer create subjects from sectors if the primary species would be an infertile clone army species.
  
• Marauder admirals can no longer serve on the council or be manually fired.
  
• Fixed some edges where a ruler could be chosen by a shroud entity but not awarded the trait.
  
• Added scripted loc for GetDefenseForceOrArmada and GetGDFOrArmada
  
• Updated Cybernetic Advantage agenda so it doesn't display placeholder art.
  
• Regular empires no longer have machine or hive-mind leaders in their external leader pools and vice versa.
  
• Cloned Organs/Self-Preservation Protocols now correctly has the same effects as Mind and Body.
  
• Fixed incorrect modifiers on the adoption effect of Synthetic traditions.
  
• Fixed MP lobby chat messages and scroll bar spilling outside the chat box.
  
• Fixed most tooltips in the game browser not working.
  
• Fixed Plantoids Species Pack DLC not showing up in MP lobby DLC list
  
• Fixed misalignment of the DLC icons in the multiplayer lobby
  
• Fixed icon lists sometimes becoming vertical when they should be horizontal
  
• Fixed coop presence icons not always showing their tooltip.
  
• The Interstellar Recruitment Office tooltip now specifies why you can't build it if you already have one in your empire.
  
• The sentinels archaeology site will now put Azaryn back on her own ship when she returns.
  
• Fixed a bug where some mercenary fleets would not have an admiral assigned to them
  
• Mercenary Admirals now get Mercenary Warrior Trait and 2 admiral traits to represent their level
  
• Mercenary Enclaves should no longer steal their admirals which they just rented out
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld
  
• Fixed an issue where AI would be unable to build any buildings if they desired to build the Ancient Refinery but did not have access to any minor artifacts
  

[h2]Stability and Performance[/h2]

• Fixed a number of Out of Sync errors.
  
• Increased performance in the leader view
  
• Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when a scientist was elected ruler while performing science ship orders
  
• Fixed a rare, but persistent crash when an empire was destroyed
  
• Fixed a crash that could sometimes happen if there were issues opening or writing log files
  
• Fixed crash in MP lobby when you confirm disbanding a coop group if the player list changed while the confirmation popup was open.
  
• Disabled tooltips in the loading screen to avoid crashes related to focus loss.
  

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Re-enabled tooltips while the game has no focus as hiding them caused issues for screen readers.
  
• Added tooltips for the join/leave coop empire button in the MP lobby when you can't click it.
  
• Added a tooltip for the coop checkbox in the MP lobby when you can't change it due to being ready.
  
• Use different titles for the multiplayer and coop game browsers.
  
• The multiplayer game browser now has a column that shows whether a game allows coop.
  
• Fixed an issue where the active agendas list would sometimes duplicate elements
  
• Added a new version of the main coop presence view to the topbar for resolutions with width >= 1600
  
• Auto-confirm disbanding a coop group in the MP lobby if all other players leave the group.
  
• Modifiers that affect leader experience gain will now be indented under a "Experience Gain Rate:" header
  
• Added confirmation prompt when selecting a country during hotjoining
  
• Lysator Syng's hire tooltip now shows that hiring him will give you 3 pirate ships as well.
  
• Show decimals for power projection breakdown in naval cap tooltip
  

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• Added set_random_$CLASS$_background_effect script effects, to assign a random background class to a leader. $CLASS$ can be replaced with admiral, general, governor, or scientist.
  
• Added support for custom_tooltip_with_modifiers for council positions.
  
• Updated documentation for council positions to include new script support. See 01_test_councilor.txt for an example of a council position not linked to civics.
  
• Added script effect "unlock_council_selection = yes" to force validation of council positions and allow the player to reselect their council positions.
  
• Fixed the ethics OverLappingElementsBox not reloading properly
  
• Fixed the spacing parameter not working for vertical OverlappingElementBoxTypes
  
• Added new "empire_size_add" modifier, which flatly increases or decreases the Empire size.
  
• Council position unlock screen will now show council positions which are available by scope check but don't require any civics
  
• Added console command "debug_trait_weights", which enables logging of some of the trait random roll weights.
  
• Added military_power_multiplier to weapon components, which allows manual adjustment of combat power assessment for intangibles that are otherwise difficult to automate.
  
• Use 2 decimals for army upkeep in army view
  

[/expand]

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

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

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