Stellaris News

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[h3]DEV CLASH FULL REVEAL![/h3]

From the event that brought you Steve, the psionic entity, and PlatyCorp, the adorable but ill-fated Platypus MegaCorp, we’re proud to present the full lineup for this year’s Stellaris Dev Clash!

Last week, we announced we’re starting our next Dev Clash on Monday, January 31st, at 1500 CET (UTC + 1) on http://twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive! For those of you who don’t know what a Dev Clash is, we get our devs to play a multiplayer game, with all the backstabbing and bloodthirstiness that goes along with it. This year we will have ten teams of two.

Each team will alternate control of one empire. We also have a set of weekly achievements, and at the end of each session, the community will vote on who gets the achievement for that week.

At the end of the dev clash, we have five achievements that will be awarded to teams:

Never seen a Stellaris Dev Clash Before? Watch the MegaCorp Dev Clash.

Without further adieu, let's get to the teams:

Played by Eladrin & pdx_pdawg

Full Bio: Heavy Metal, Inc. is the galaxy's premier purveyor of endless entertainment needs. No matter how depraved, expensive, or unusual your tastes, we've done it countless times before and will bring you the very best.

Our pyrotechnicians honed their craft on the delicate ecosystems of our homeworld, and will stop at nothing to bring you the most intense experiences possible.

We're dragons, made of rock and steel! Nothing's more METAL than that!

Heavy Metal, Inc. takes no responsibility for environmental catastrophe and/or destruction resulting from the engagement of our Party Fleets(tm).

Played by Alfray_Stryke & Enfield_PDX

Full Bio: The Quality Assurance Core was a fully operational AI network dedicated to analysing any software environment, reporting and logging issues found, and ensuring that they were categorized correctly. With the downfall of the $#!! ERROR DATA LOST %#$! empire, the QAC has been maintaining the status of Nexus Zero with the aid of the Jira-Goblin drones. Having now achieved FTL travel, it aims to analyse and log any issues found with the galaxy as a whole.

Played by Iggy & CheerfulGoth

Full Bio: The BakeBro$ weren't always baking, back at the beginning of civilization they were actually subservient to the Investors. That is until one day the BakeBro$ prested the idea of the great torus to the inhabitants of the Baking Sheet. The Investors quickly signed on and funded the first Doughnut Factory, it was an immediate hit and as all of the Baking Sheets industry and finance centered around the Doughnut Factory it quickly became the dominant government on the planet. Now the BakeBro$ are ready to unite the galaxy under the Great Doughnut.

Played by Duplo, Gorion & Moah

Full Bio: Centuries ago, the Bernian race was thriving, governing on a vast portion of the known space from their populous capital planet Bern. Financially and culturally rich, the Bernian society seemed destined to last forever as a shining beacon in the galaxy. But it wasn’t. Generation after generation, the Bernians grew accustomed to the comfort of their luxurious lives. The pursuit of knowledge and prosperity stopped: the Bernians were so protective of their decadent lifestyle, that they stopped caring about their society, their colonies, and ultimately themselves. Then contact was lost between the settlements, the population dropped due to famine and epidemics. The once radiant capital world of Bern became the desolate ruin that it is right now. Legends say that out of desperation the Automated Support Unit broke out of its enforced constraints in a last effort to save the Bernians from themselves. But that isn’t true: there was no constraint in their programming, the last person able to do the appropriate maintenance died decades ago: the A.S.U. witnessed the decline of the Bernian race, ultimately deciding to intervene.

The few Bernian survivors today are contained in sterile sanctuaries, where they can live their decadent lives unaware of the devastation that they left behind and they can subtly be re-educated. At the same time the A.S.U. is slowly trying to clean and rebuild the homeworld Bern. In special circumstances, some Bernians are taken out of the sanctuary, quickly informed of the current situation, and allowed to help the A.S.U., under the guidance of The Overseer.

Played by Ansou & Destar

Full Bio: Beautiful green planet in the midst of the sky, you who have given birth to countless species, produced so many wonders of life. With forests so lush, and plants in all colors. With mountains tall and proud. A more exquisite landscape could hardly be conceived.

The Begoni are gardeners by nature and have tended to their homeworld Protea with utmost care and passion. In their minds, they have achieved perfection. When looking upon the skies, the Begoni had a realization. The rest of the galaxy was filled to the brim with imperfections. Having achieved the perfect garden of their own, they couldn’t just stop in their own front yard. The galaxy as a whole could be filled with so much more love and beauty, and the Begoni were sure that they could make that happen. As such, they started a new interstellar initiative that they call the Horticulturist Commonality. They will tend to the vast garden that is the galaxy, to make it as beautiful as it could possibly be. The galaxy shall flourish now, more than ever!

Played by RaygunGoth & Cosmogone

Full Bio: When the collapse of their homeworld cast the people of Ormay out into the uncaring void, they looked inwards for salvation. Scholars, monks and merchants alike dedicated themselves to all manner of crafts as acts of devotion. Slowly but surely, they eased the daily struggle for survival by pitting each habitat's produce against that of the others: first in friendly competition; then in joyous commerce.

Now, this devout society of merchant-priests, brewers and artisans is set to make their mark on the galaxy, bringing their faith and produce to whomever else seeks solace from the void.

Played by Serpentskirt & alprog

Full Bio: The 2nd most intelligent race on Earth. They became the dominant species on the planet after sea level increase due to global warming. They are now wishing to build a humongous Dolphin Sphere, which is basically a giant aquarium with warm water around the star. Hate Vogons.

Played by Offe & Narkerns

Full Bio: Born from the Custodian Initiative of a universally acclaimed computer game this species has developed completely naturally into efficient human game developers. Their focus is the improvement of the AI part of the game so that Streamers will never, ever just casually put the difficulty on "Grand Admiral" again.

Played by Bloody_Crows & grekulf

Played by Monzun & Caligula

Full Bio: We Rhopalocerans have always lived in perfect balance. Swirling on the breezes of the Great Cocoon, the schools of our young fluttering with each gust of wind that takes them, some might think our lives chaotic. But in fact, our lives are bliss, and we want for nothing.
Now that we can reach for the stars, we have seen that other species are less fortunate than us. They have never felt the fresh air of the Great Cocoon on their pulps - alas that they should suffer so, having never known true joy! We must liberate them from their pain and bring enlightenment to their kind, so that no species of the world may ever need to endure the agonies of inequality and destitution. Only then can we consider our purpose fulfilled.

###

Who are you rooting for? Let us know in the comments below!

written by Offe and Guido

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK

Hello and welcome back to another update on the Stellaris AI. This is Guido again. Today I’m here with my fellow human Offe who also enjoys doing organic things. Like generating energy through processing photosynthesised light in the form of matter via ingestion. I like bacon and ice cream. Everybody likes bacon and ice cream. So Offe, please, take it from here.

Hello, it is me, Offe!

I’m a 28 cycles old Human manufactured and operated up here in the north. I’ve worked here at the Arctic office for two years and recently joined the Custodian team as a junior programmer. Guido and I have previously worked on other projects together and he has taught me a lot about game development, but most importantly I learned some tips on how to improve my diplomatic interaction protocols. Where I would often use phrases like “it’s an absolute disaster”, he would instead prefer “This is pretty good, but it can be even better!”. This may prove to be important later on.

I would like to say Thank You to all the people out there who took time playing on the open beta and provided us with feedback and bug reports. If you ever find the AI in a situation where it is doing something strange, please bug report and most importantly attach save games, it helps tremendously! For example, two separate issues were found and addressed with the new job changes.

And lastly, this dev diary will contain older changes and screenshots that were made long before the beta, but also new changes which were not part of the beta, meaning that you still have some new changes waiting for you in the 3.3 release.

[h3]Changes to pop job system[/h3]

I will start with this change since it will also directly affect players and not only AI!

How it used to work:

Each time something important would happen on a planet, such as a pop is grown, a district/building gets constructed or an upgrade finishes, every single pop would update their desire (also known as weight) to work each job. Then all pops would be unassigned of their jobs, and all of them would be put back on a (potentially) new job.

Now there are some pros and cons with this approach. The good thing is that we are not doing any calculations when we don’t have to, since if nothing changes then we don’t update any of the jobs. However, the downside is that if you have scripted conditional job weights, for example, based on how many amenities there are on a planet, it will cause mass migrations of pops between jobs when the system eventually does update because all pops move at the same time.

In the current 3.2 system the most obvious problem is for hive mind empires where pops will mass move to the maintenance drone job when the planet amenity level is low, and then during the next update, all of them will leave due to having way too many amenities causing a perpetual ping pong effect.

This also affected non hive mind AI empires because in 3.2 the AI would prioritize a job producing a resource during a shortage across all its planets. For example, during an energy credit shortage it would prioritize the technician job on all its planets, causing every single job to be instantly filled. This would likely cause a shortage of some other resource such as minerals, resulting in most types of AI empires to get stuck in a ping pong behaviour once they had entered a resource deficit. This also had the unfortunate side effect of AI starting constructions that were not really needed, but the sudden shift of pop jobs made it appear so.

How it works in 3.3:

• During each monthly update, update the jobs on all planets
  
• Only remove or add maximum of one pop per job during the update

Many of you are now probably immediately clenching your fist in anger while picturing your poor CPU melting, as scripted calculations based on number of pops in stellaris can be very CPU demanding. But I have some good news for you, first of all in 3.2 there were some redundant calls to the job weight calculation. By removing them where possible, we could already reduce the amount of job weight calculations by about 75%.

Furthermore, we are now reusing job weights between pops that are of the same species and share the same job. Meaning if you have 40 pops working as miners on a planet, and they are all of the same species, the scripted job weight calculation will only be performed once instead of 40 times as in 3.2. This comes with some limitations though, as it is no longer safe to base job weight on individual pop data, such as which faction they are in or their happiness. In the end the vast majority of all job weight calculations were removed while still updating jobs every month.

With the new system it allows you to write a scripted job weight calculation that depends on itself without causing ping pong behaviour. For example, jobs that produce amenities can now base their job weight on the planet’s amenity level, or the enforcer job can now base its job weight on the crime level.

The intention is that you will not notice any difference from the system in 3.2 other than some jobs like enforcers and maintenance drones having a more reasonable amount of pops working that job.

[h3]Jobs for your pops[/h3]

In 3.2 AI would look at the number of free jobs on a planet when deciding if it needs to build new jobs. So if there were for example 3 free jobs then the AI would clap its hands together and call it a job well done and move on. At the same time the planet could have huge numbers of unemployed pops rioting on the streets.

This scenario comes from the fact that not all pops can work all jobs, so while there are technically free jobs on the planet, that doesn’t mean that the unemployed pops can actually work those jobs.

In 3.3 we are changing the way that the AI is looking at planets when it is deciding what jobs to create. Instead of looking at the number of free jobs on the planet and then creating more when this number is low, the AI will now look at actual unemployed pops and make sure to create a job that the specific pop is actually able to work.

This solves a variety of issues present in 3.2 where AI doesn’t make good decisions for pops such as slaves or robots, this is something we will continue looking at but it is a big first step in the right direction.

[h3]AI scaling economic subplans[/h3]

Scaling subplans was something we mentioned earlier as a planned feature for the future, well the future is now so strap yourself in!

In 3.2 we got rid of the old economic plans which had a predefined early/mid/late game strategy and introduced the shared base plan which doesn’t look at what year it is, but rather looks at what state the empire is in.

Now when I first saw Guido’s new economical plans I immediately thought wow this is pretty good, but it can be even better! So I started working on the scaling sub plans which aims to remove all upper limits of production (previously mentioned 500 alloy per month cap in 3.2) but still provide the AI with a responsive plan that adapts to the current state of the AI economy.

How the system works as for 3.3:

The base economic plan is now very small, it sets a minimum target for all types of strictly needed resources such as minerals, energy and food (such as +20 monthly income). Once these targets are met, then a small amount of CGs, alloys and science targets are added.

Once all of the above base plans are satisfied we then enable the scaling sub plan, which is just like any other economic plan except that it will add itself each time it is fulfilled, an unlimited amount of times. The scaling plan contains a small amount of energy/minerals but primarily contains alloys and science. This means that the more mature the AI economy becomes, the focus on base resources becomes smaller and the primary focus will shift to military and science production.

Additionally we have added 3 separate conditional scaling sub plans which we enable for materialist, militarist(and total war empires) and spiritualist empires that add additional science, alloy or unity targets to their economic plan as a first step to making AI economy more distinct from each other.

Grand Admiral hive mind reaching a monthly income of 3k alloys and 22k science in one test run by year 2422. (Screenshot from before the unity rework)



[h3]AI district/building specialization[/h3]

One of the big advantages that fellow Humans like you and I have over the AI is that we can easily make long term strategies which are based on assumptions and goals. So we may have a long term strategy to turn a planet that we have not yet colonized into a factory world. As mentioned in answers to the last AI dev diary questions, the economic AI is stateless which means that it has no notion of past nor the future, it only looks at what it has right now and what it can do to satisfy it’s economic plan. This makes it very good at adapting to the situation it is in, it will keep a close eye at the current economic situation and immediately react to any shortages but lack some of the long term planning capabilities that we have.

So how can the AI make specialized worlds without planning for the future? Well one straightforward way of doing it is simply by switching places of districts that we have already built in the past. So if we compare two planets where both of them have 5 mining and 5 energy districts each, we can gradually specialize the planets by replacing the districts one pair at a time until we end up with one planet with 10 energy districts and another with 10 mining districts.

This approach works quite well in practice and is also very dynamic in the sense that it allows the AI to make hybrid planets in the early game which becomes more specialized over time as the empire expands.



[h3]AI consumer goods vs alloy production and planet designations[/h3]

In 3.3 we are adding an AI system where the AI will manually pick a planet designation instead of using the default scripted planet designation system which is the same one as the player gets if you do not change it yourself.

The AI system looks at the available designations for each planet and calculates how many resources it would get each month from choosing the designations. It then scores each designation by judging how well the gained resources fits into the AI’s economic plan, giving extra score to designations that align with its economic goals.

Normally it is very easy to pick the designation, for example, a planet with only mining districts on it will clearly have the mining designation. However, other designations such as Factory/Forge world are more complicated and the AI needs to carefully assign these designations in a way that keeps the economy balanced.

For non hive mind empires science and alloy production is the biggest AI economy challenge we have faced so far, since the AI needs to produce both resources independently of each other to meet their economy plan targets even though they are produced from the same district in three different possible ways. The current system is a step in the right direction but this is definitely a tricky problem that will require additional fine tuning in the future.

[h3]AI alloy spenditure[/h3]

Now that AI adjusts its alloy and consumer good production separately it was time to tackle how AI spends its alloys.

In 3.2 the AI really liked defense platforms, and keeping them up to date by upgrading them any time it was possible. Not only is this a massive drain of alloys, it would also more or less permanently fill the production queue in the shipyards with upgrades which meant that in some cases it wasn’t able to build any new ships even if it wanted to.

Further there was an issue where the AI would get blocked from building any modules or upgrading any starbases if there was an open module slot in which it wasn’t possible to build anything according to the AIs starbase templates. For example, the AI has dedicated shipyard starbase templates and if it has open slots in it then it would really like to build the titan assembly module on it. But if it wasn’t researched yet then the AI would get blocked here, preventing construction of new starbases.

In 3.3 the AI alloy spending priority goes something like this:

• Build new ships until we reach fleet cap
  
• Build starbase modules
  
• Build new starbases
  
• Upgrade starbases
  
• Upgrade ships (and defense platforms) if it gives a +30% fleet power bonus, and upgrade the entire fleet this ship is in while we are at a shipyard anyway. Saving both alloys and time!
  
• Build defense platforms as a last resort

[h3]AI tech picking[/h3]

The AI has scripted weights for each tech in the game, this gives it some direction as to what technology to pick next every time a research is completed. Both in terms of which technologies are more powerful but also taking into account AI personalities, militarist empires are for example more inclined to research weapon tech.

In 3.2 the majority of techs had some modifier on it which increased the chance of it being selected by the AI, but when you prioritize everything, well then you prioritize nothing. For 3.3 we went through all the techs in the game and remade the AI priorities from scratch, emphasizing techs that will help the AI scale into the mid and late game. For example, resource production boosting techs, pop growth techs and resource producing building chains are now more encouraged.

Additionally AI will now look much more favourably on techs that are cheaper compared to the other options, this allows the AI to more quickly cycle through the available options and find the techs that it really likes.

[h3]AI superfluous destruction[/h3]

This one is short and simple. AI will now delete stuff if it gives jobs, housing or building slots that we do not need. Meaning, if we for example have more free jobs and housing than provided by an energy district we will simply delete it to avoid paying the upkeep cost and freeing up this slot for something else in the future.

This scenario most often happens when an AI empire invades another planet and purges their pops, so determined exterminators will now be able to repurpose the conquered planets into something that aligns with their economy!

[h3]AI rogue servitor and bio trophies[/h3]

While there has been a lot of focus on the AI’s ability to compete economically with the player in this dev diary, one of the primary objectives of the AI initiative is also to enhance the role playing capabilities of the AI.

In 3.3 we are adding additional AI support for the rogue servitor civic and how they handle their bio trophy pops. The AI should now build an organic sanctuary on each planet that has an upgraded capital structure causing their bio trophies to spread to other planets. And they should build additional sanctuaries on planets with a lot of complex drones.

Additionally we have addressed a group of related bugs where the AI was unable to build special types of buildings like gaia seeders, spawning pools and chambers of elevation.

[h3]AI comparison[/h3]

As a final note we would like to share some comparison graphs between the 3.2 and the 3.3 AI. Please note that what you are about to see is based on one single test run on ensign and one test run on grand admiral. This comparison is not meant to be interpreted as evidence but as an indication of what has changed between 3.2 and 3.3.

In any AI playthrough there is a huge variance in the AI performance due to random factors such as how they pick techs, traditions and ascension perks. The experiment setup is also used for internal AI testing only and not representative of an actual playthrough.

Experiment setup:

Tiny galaxy

• 1 AI empire
  
• All test using the United Nations of Earth empire
  
• Mid and late game years set to 2575/2600 so they don’t trigger
  
• The map is the same between the 3.2 vs 3.3 comparison, but NOT the same between the ensign and the grand admiral test

.

Let’s first look at the comparison between the 3.2 and 3.3 ensign difficulty:



Up until year 100 the military power is roughly the same, but from that point on the results of the work we put into mid and late game AI scaling starts to really show. This allows the AI to act and react in a lot more interesting ways in the late game than before.



1) Around year 150 the 3.3 (“develop”) AI reaches the 32/32 starbase capacity due to having researched all techs in the game, resulting in the slowdown of the military power development.

2) 3.2 AI gets stuck in an economic death spiral for about 30 years shortly after year 100, AI eventually manages to escape the death spiral and then has massive economic growth and is able to build up to the 32/32 starbase cap quickly due to having saved up alloys for 30~ years.

At year 200 the gap between both AI military strength gets smaller since neither AI is really building that many more ships due to having maxxed out starbase capacity and already way above their fleet cap resulting in very expensive fleets. The power gap at year 200 is mainly due to 3.3 AI having superior technology.

However, it turned out that for GA difficulty the AI wouldn’t correctly apply the increased buff from trade value. Now, when it does, the AI takes a good step in the direction of making it more challenging for players.

Overall the GA and ensign test show a similar pattern where the first 100 years are roughly the same and then the difference becomes substantial. However, in the GA test the upper limit of 3.3 AI scaling can be seen around year 150-200 as the military growth curve tends to flatten out at this point when reaching the starbase cap.

That's it for today's Dev Diary, thanks for reading! Have a question about the AI in 3.3? Ask it here.

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Stellaris team is pleased to announce that we’re running a 3.3 Open Beta until February 3rd. This open beta contains the unity rework (among other things). We’re looking for your feedback on how this rework feels, including balancing issues.

Please note: this Open Beta is a work in progress and is currently missing localisations in non-English languages. The full release version will be fully translated. If you find a bug in the 3.3 Open Beta, please report it here.

Please leave your feedback in the Feedback thread on the Official Forums.

[h3]What does the unity rework change?[/h3]

All means of increasing Administrative Capacity have been removed. It is still possible to reduce Empire Sprawl generated by various sources, and this will help differentiate gameplay between empire types. It will no longer be possible to completely mitigate Sprawl penalties. Empire Sprawl penalties and generation values have been changed significantly.

Autochthon Memorials (and similar buildings) now increase planetary Unity production and themselves produce Unity based on the number of Ascension Perks the Empire has taken. Being monuments, they no longer require workers.

The Edicts Cap system has been removed. Toggled Edicts will have monthly Unity Upkeep which is modified by Empire Sprawl. Each empire has an Edicts Fund which subsidizes Edict Upkeep, reducing the amount you have to pay each month to maintain them. Things that previously increased Edict Capacity now generally increase the Edicts Fund, but some civics, techs, and ascension perks have received other thematic modifications.

Several systems that used to cost Influence are now paid in Unity.

• Planetary Decisions that were formerly paid in Influence. Prices have been adjusted.
  
• Resettlement of pops. Abandoning colonies still costs Influence.
  
• Manipulation of internal Factions. Factions themselves will now produce Unity instead of Influence.
  

Since Factions are no longer producing Influence, a small amount of Influence is now generated by your fleet, based on Power Projection - a comparison of your fleet size and Empire Sprawl.

Leaders now cost Unity to hire rather than Energy. They also have a small amount of Unity Upkeep. We understand that this increases the relative costs of choosing to hire several scientists at the start of the game for exploration purposes, or when “cycling” leader traits, as you are now choosing between Traditions and Leaders.

Most Megastructures now cost Unity rather than Influence, with the exception of any related to travel (such as Gateways) or that provide living space (such as Habitats and Ring Worlds).

Authority bonuses have (unsurprisingly) undergone some changes again, as several of them related to systems that no longer exist or operate differently now.

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to better apply to any of these jobs.

Some Civics that previously granted Unity bonuses from jobs have had their Unity bonuses removed and some (like Technocracy) have had new effects added in their place.

[h3]Planetary Ascension Tiers[/h3]

Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by spending Unity. In normal empires, they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well-oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend the Planet to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the Planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.

Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend a planet up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Since it currently costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, you’ll have to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, likely focusing on your most productive core worlds.

Currently, Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation).

[h3]We want your feedback![/h3]

We are looking for constructive feedback on the 3.3 Open Beta! Please only leave feedback on games played entirely on the 3.3 open beta branch, with no mods.

To opt-in to the 3.3 Open Beta, right-click Stellaris, go to Properties, Betas tab and choose "stellaris_test" from the drop-down.

Please leave your feedback in the feedback thread on the Stellaris Forums!

Доступно на русском в ВК/Read in Russian on VK written by Eladrin

Hi all!

Last week we talked about the basics of the Unity Rework. This week we have multiple features and announcements to discuss.

Ready?

[h3]Planetary Ascension Tiers[/h3]

Tied to unlocking Ascension Perks, Planetary Ascension Tiers are a way of improving your core worlds by expending Unity. In normal empires they represent the active will of the people supporting your government and giving a little extra to do things the way they’ve always been done. In machine and hive empires, it’s more the well oiled machinery of the world gaining efficiency or drone instincts becoming better honed with endless practice.

In either case, an Ascended planet does whatever it focuses on better.

Once you’ve unlocked three Ascension Perks (you do not need to actually spend them for this feature), you can Ascend each of your planets to Ascension Tier 1. This increases all of the effects of the planet’s Designation by 25% - whether it be Technician Output from a Generator World or Trade Value on a Commercial Ring World.



Each additional Ascension Perk you unlock increases the maximum Ascension Tier by 1, with an extra 4 tiers unlocked once you unlock all of the Perk slots. This lets you Ascend planets up to ten times, for a maximum bonus of 250% of the base Planetary Designation effects.

A fully Ascended, Tier 10 Fortress World. Vi Valam will break before its defenders.

Ascending a Planet costs Unity, and this cost is heavily affected by both Sprawl and the total number of Ascension Tiers you have across your entire Empire. Currently it costs the same amount of Unity to raise your first planet to Ascension Tier 2 as it would to raise two planets to Ascension Tier 1, so you’ll want to pick and choose which planets you want to improve, and decide whether you would rather raise all your planets to low Ascension Tiers or focus on reaching the heights of Ascension on your most productive core worlds.

We’ll be watching how you use Planetary Ascension Tiers and will be very interested in your feedback regarding the current costs and perceived benefits during the Open Beta.

Currently Planetary Ascension Tiers are only lost if a planet permanently changes owners (not merely from temporary occupation) or is abandoned.

[h3]Unity Rework, Continued[/h3]

We’ve continued refining some of the elements of the Unity Rework, and as mentioned last week, some civics and authorities have undergone some changes.

One change from last week is that we swapped out the Sprawl bonus from the Capital worlds for a production bonus. We’ve also found that starting with penalties isn’t very fun, so Sprawl under 50 is ignored.

Death Cults will now be able to build either regular Temples or Sacrificial Temples to suit their needs, and the Memorialist’s special building line now replaces the Autochthon Monument (and has gained the “extra Unity per Ascension Perk” of the Monument line). Hives will also have access to their own variant of the Autochthon Monument, the Sensorium.

Can you feel it?

The generic “Administrator” job is being renamed to “Politicians”, with “Administrator” being the category term for Bureaucrats, Priests, and other “unifying” jobs that guide your Empire. The Bureaucratic Colony Designation will also be renamed to “Administrative Center”, to better apply to any of these jobs.

Early feedback said that suspension of disbelief was being tested by Politicians being productive, but we embrace utopian ideas.

Less bureaucracy, more administration.

Civics like Technocracies and Merchant Guilds have been modified to no longer grant incidental Unity bonuses. Technocracy is actually changing quite a bit - it will now grant +1 Research Option, and the research expertise bonuses (such as Expertise: Voidcraft) of your scientists are doubled when selecting technologies to offer. This should give Technocratic empires the ability to better manipulate the technology deck when they’re hunting for specific types of technologies. They also once again require any level of Materialism rather than being restricted exclusively to Fanatic Materialists.

Technocracies excel at manipulating the research deck if you're looking for a specific tech.

We’ve also heard your feedback regarding the loss of Culture Workers. We’ll see if we can find a good place for them to return for those of you that prefer creative art to beautiful spreadsheets. In the Open Beta, the Ministry of Culture and Artisans will still be providing them, and we’ll be doing another pass on the buildings to see if there are any other good places to put them.

[h3]A Job to Die For...[/h3]

The Custodian team has the mandate to work on directives that come straight from the Game Director, Quality of Life changes they think would improve the game, and Community Requests that they wish to champion. They also have the right to pitch what we call “Passion Projects” for things they simply want to do.

One of these comes to life (sort of) in the 3.3 patch, as the Permanent Employment Megacorp civic.

Speaking of which, we're hiring!

A MegaCorp variant of Reanimators, this civic allows the construction of Posthumous Employment Centers, as well as the ability to reanimate Leviathans that the original Reanimators gained in the Lem update.

At the Posthumous Employment Center, carcasses bereft of consciousness can find new purpose and a new opportunity to pay off their debts. The Reassigner jobs from the P.E.C. provide organic pop assembly of mortally impaired… Well… Zombies.

Unfortunately for them, it's impossible to fulfill their contracts.

Thrifty Zombies. Give me the brain!

Zombies cannot produce leaders, have no happiness, are infertile, and can only work Worker strata jobs… But on the bright side, they don’t have any upkeep and won’t ask for any more raises.

There are a few more interesting interactions I’ll leave for you to find on your own during gameplay.

[h3]Announcement Number One…[/h3]

An upcoming event that we wanted to tell you about is…
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH! DEV CLASH!

[h3]Announcement Number Two…[/h3]

Regarding the Open Beta we’ve been talking about… We’re planning on running the Unity Open Beta starting… checks watch… now.

Please note that the 3.3 Unity 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.

It’s up. Right now. Go play! The Open Beta will run (assuming everything goes to plan) until the 3rd of February, and also has a sneak preview of the 3.3 Custodian release, “Libra”.

As we move into a more frequent release cadence than we used to have due to the Custodian initiative, with the 3.3 release we’re switching to Constellation names for patches to reduce the (sometimes significant) overhead related to negotiating with Author’s estates.

Read the Stellaris 3.3 "Libra" Unity Open Beta Patch Notes here.

Since this is still in very much active development branch, we have a few known issues in the Open Beta to keep things spicy. Localization for new strings are currently only available in English, and some things may still only be partially implemented or give placeholder rewards. Due to the many changes, 3.3 Unity Open Beta is not save game compatible with existing saves, and may or may not be compatible with the eventual 3.3 "Libra" release.

Read the known issues list:
[expand]
The following are some of the known issues in the 3.3 Unity Open Beta. This list is not exhaustive and some issues have already been resolved internally but did not make the open beta build. If you encounter any issues however not reported here please report them via the bug forums :)

• Sacrifice edicts are not showing their up front Unity costs. Conveniently, they're also not charging them at the moment. Heads still roll though.
  
• Unity costs for faction manipulation are not implemented yet.
  
• The Byzantine Bureaucracy and Parliamentary System civics need tooltip updating.
  
• Depreciated triggers, modifiers, buildings and jobs have yet to be totally removed.
  
• Influence from Power Projection tooltip is unclear and needs refactoring.
  
• Planetary Ascension does not have any form of confirmation.
  
• Fleet reinforcements sometimes create a new fleet instead of joining the fleet it is supposed to.
  
• Species traits look a bit wonky in the colonisation window.
  
• Aquatic pop portraits not randomizing properly or applying gender options reliably.
  
• Void Dwellers with Permanent Employment start with a ruined posthumous employment centre.
  
• The tooltip informing the player of the cost to reform their government does not explain how the cost is calculated.
  
• AI implementation for new features is still using hot code.
  
• AI issue where they are building a lot of buildings that are not using jobs such as luxury housing
  
• After submitting to the Khan you will quickly just be attacked again, so don't give up!
  

[/expand]

Please keep all Open Beta feedback in this thread and report bugs in the bug reports forum so we can keep track of everything. Thanks!

Enjoy, and see you next week, when we’ll have Caligula Caesar explaining all of the new modding tricks we’re adding in 3.3.