Stellaris Dev Diary #291 - First Contact is Out, What’s Next?
by EladrinHi 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 StrykeWe 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 SettingsNext week we’ll be going over more of the things planned to go into the 3.7.4 patch. See you then!
"Some early explorations onto what cloaked ships could look like in Stellaris, and what the transition to cloaking would be like. Lots of fun to do!"
"Some early theme exploration sketches for the front end Illustration. We ended up going with the the lower left one; Herders in swamplands of some distant planet are frightened by a sudden visit of an unknown."
The Chemical Ship of 'First Contact' based on Lloyds' concept Art.
The MSI Flagship for 'First Contact', based on Lloyds' concept Art.