Stellaris News

by Eladrin

I'm pleased to announce that the Technology Open Beta that we first talked about in Stellaris Dev Diary #325 is now available for your feedback.

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

The dev diary linked above contains more details regarding the intents behind some of the changes. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

We have created this feedback form to collect your impressions on both the partial tech rebalance and the military and economic changes that are present on the branch.

[h3]TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES[/h3]
Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
  
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
  
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
  
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.
  

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
  
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  
  • Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
    
  • Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
    
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
  
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
  
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
  
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
  
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
  
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
  
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
  
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
  
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
  
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
  
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
  
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
  
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
  
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
  
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
  
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
    
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
    
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
    
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
    
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
    
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
    
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
  
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.
  

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.
  

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  

The Technology Open Beta will run until January 15th.

Thank you for your help in improving Stellaris!


[h3]Please note that the Technology 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 - Technology Open Beta" branch.[/h3]
Please disable mods for the Technology Open Beta, they are likely to break.

Link to feedback form.

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The 3.10.4 "Pyxis" update has been released today. Of particular interest in this week’s update are a fix that lets AI be more willing to recruit Scientists for exploration, a fix to certain modifiers doubling up, and some adjustments to negative leader traits.

[h3]3.10.4 "PYXIS" PATCH NOTES[/h3]
Balance

• Significantly reduced the yearly chance for leaders to gain negative traits.
  
• Due to player feedback, the Micromanager negative trait for Commanders now increases fleet upkeep instead of reducing command limit.
  
• The Lethargic negative trait for Commanders now also reduces fleet upkeep.
  
• The Nervous negative trait for Commanders now also increases disengagement chance.
  
• Having the Antagonistic Diplomatic Stance will now appease your factions asking for you to have a Strong Diplomatic Stance.
  

Bugfixes

• Added some failsafes to generate council positions and gestalt nodes in various edge cases where they weren't created or disappeared
  
• Clarified reformed tooltip for Dark Consortium civics
  
• Declining to Hunt for the Hyacinth should now correctly remove the event chain.
  
• Fix Astral Harvesting not available for heavily conquering empires
  
• Fixed a typo in the pre-FTL Provide Technology Tooltip.
  
• Fixed Civics not swapping to their alternative when switching Governments
  
• Fixed missing loc for the Fear of the Dark Admiral trait
  
• Fixed the Accelerated Time Astral Planes Modifier having a description for a title.
  
• Removed a redundant tooltip from the Synthetic Evolution event
  
• Ruler clothing selection in the empire designer is now respected
  
• Some planet modifiers that were getting incorrectly applied twice should now only be applied once.
  
• Updated the All Crisis Strength tooltip to accurately state that it doubles the strength of each subsequent crisis.
  
• Your ice miners will no longer make your Mercenaries homeless if they happened to have built their base above an ice asteroid.
  

AI

• AI Empires will now be more willing to hire leaders for their science ships as long as they believe they can afford the Unity upkeep.
  

UI

• Fixed XP not being shown in XP bar tooltip for gestalt rulers and councilors.
  

Modding

• collapsable_leader_container should now calculate the correct height no matter the amount of horizontal slots.
  
• Fixed lock_country scope change incorrectly stating that the output scope was a bypass, when it is actually a country
  

Barring unexpected developments, we consider the 3.10 “Pyxis” release stable at this point, and the 3.11 “Eridanus” update is the next expected release - currently planned for 2024Q1. As mentioned in an earlier dev diary, 3.11 “Eridanus” will be focused primarily on general bugfixing and stability.

[h3]Technology Open Beta[/h3]

We’ll be putting a Technology Open Beta up tomorrow to gather feedback and data on some possible changes to research. While some changes planned for 3.11 “Eridanus” have snuck into this release (like some improvements to Galactic Doorstep), the overall technology rebalance is considered experimental and may or may not end up being released. It is likely to undergo some changes if it does go live.

The Technology Open Beta will run from December 15th through January 15th. We’ll post a feedback form tomorrow to help gather your impressions and thoughts.

[h3]TECHNOLOGY OPEN BETA RELEASE NOTES[/h3]
Features

• Replaced basic research technologies such as Quantum Theory with Breakthrough Technologies. Breakthrough Technologies will only appear once you have researched enough techs of your current tier and are required to research to reach the next tier.
  
• Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them.
  
• Enigmatic Engineering blocks your Breakthrough Technologies from spreading.
  
• Events that give progress towards random technologies can grant progress towards Breakthrough Technologies, but will not give as much as they would a regular technology.
  

Improvements

• Technology and Tradition costs are now distinct sliders in galaxy setup.
  
• Added notification message when new pop settles in zeya (Gaia planet in azilash)
  

Balance

• Adjustments made to the Galactic Doorstep origin:
  
• Added Gateway Cost and Megastructure Build Speed modifiers to the Galactic Doorstep origin.
  
• Galactic Doorstep event chain now directly rewards the Gateway Activation technology and gives far more progress on the Gateway Construction technology
  
• Increased the effects of Empire Size on Technology to match its effect on Traditions.
  
• Rebalanced research speed modifiers. Most sources of Research Speed now have a corresponding increase in Researcher job upkeep
  
• Removed or adjusted many sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  
• Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
  
• Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
  
• Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
  
• Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
  
• Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
  
• Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
  
• Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
  
• Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
  
• Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
  
• Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
  
• Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
  
• Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
  
• Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked.
  
• Increased technology costs, especially those of higher tier technologies.
  
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Reduced output of researcher jobs
  
• Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
  
• Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
  
• The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
  
• Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
  
• Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
  
  • Slightly reduced the research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Refactored how the output scaling for Knights from Squires functions, these now behave as normal additive modifiers instead of multiplicative modifiers
    
  • Knights now correctly inherit production modifiers from researchers and administrators
    
  • Slightly reduced the unity and research output for Knight and Lord Commander jobs
    
  • Knight output modifiers now only apply to resources, like other job output modifiers
    
  • The Fortress Habitat Designation for Knights no longer provides +1 Defensive Army per pop on the habitat, instead each Squire job provides +1 Defensive Army
    
  • Squires now increase the resource output of Knights by 2.5% not 2% per Squire.
    
  • The Luminous Blades modifier from the Knight's Quest now removes the alloy upkeep of knights and gives +25% Army damage instead of an empire-wide +1.5% alloy production modifier per knight
    
• Delegate GalCom focus traits now have a small chance to give favors.
  
• Reworked and rebalanced the Erudite, Cyborg, Synthetic, Psionic, Chosen One, and Chosen of X traits to include new leader assignments.
  

Bugfix

• Repairing The Black Crown should no longer fire generic gateway repaired events.
  

Modding

• Added `last_resolution_category_changed` trigger
  

[h3]Meet the Devs Video[/h3]
Game Systems Designer @Gruntsatwork did a video interview about what it’s like to work on the Custodian and Crisis teams.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

No, you can’t implement trash. - E

[h3]Next Week[/h3]
The nights are getting cold and long, so for the last dev diary of the year it’s time for a look at the year in review.

See you then!

Hello Stellaris Community!

The Stellaris Team, and our partners at Republic of Gamers, are proud to announce the theme of this year's Mod Jam:
Legendary Leaders!



Modders will have until January 9th (feature-complete submissions are due January 4th + 5 days of polish/bugfixing) to create:​

• One (1) Legendary Leader
  
• Two (2) or more flavor events that occur after the leader has been hired
  
• One (1) or more events that lead to the option to recruit the Legendary Leader
  
• One (1) or more unique Solar System Initializer(s) where the event(s) to recruit the Legendary Leader begin
  
• One (1) scripted_effect that will spawn your legendary leader's solar_system_initializer (to be fired from solar_system scope)
  

The full and official rules are available on the Official Stellaris Discord. Haven't signed up yet? Sign ups will be open until 5 PM CET on December 14th! Not a modder? Subscribe to #MODJAM2024 on the Steam workshop and get the new content as soon as it's available!

This year our modders will be competing for some fantastic prizes from our partners at Republic of Gamers:

• 1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
  
• 2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
  
• 3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
  
• 4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain
  

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modder’s region

The winner will be determined by the result of a Community Vote, which will start on January 11th, 2024 at 5 PM CET and finish 5 PM CET on February 11th, 2024. You can read the full terms and conditions here.

Thanks to everyone who's signed up so far, and best of luck to our modders!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone,

The 3.10.3 "Pyxis" update has been released. This release focused primarily on stability, and the contents are identical to the Open Beta that was released on Tuesday.

[h3]3.10.3 "Pyxis" Patch Notes[/h3]
Improvements

• Now ‘New Entries’ notification on the outliner tabs is cleared, even when switching between tabs using keyboard shortcuts.
  
• Ulastar is now an advisor
  
• Vas the Gilded is now an ambassador
  

Balance

• Pre-FTLs in Federation's End now have their technological progress frozen
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed a number of event or paragon leaders not being generated with the correct traits
  
• Fixed envoys passively gaining XP
  
• Fixed missing subtitle for Scout trait
  
• Pre-FTL Empires will now have a fully functional council when they ascend to the stars.
  
• Released Vassals will now have a fully functional council when released.
  

Stability

• Fix crash on startup for Linux (including Steam Deck).
  
• Fix crash related to modifiers of recently destroyed empires updating
  
• Fixed crash when surveying a planet that was just removed from the map
  

UI

• Removed some empty space in the topbar
  

Modding

• Added moddable_conditions_custom_tooltip parameter to civics modification statement to allow displaying a custom requirement key when no condition has been specified
  
• Fixed civics modifications statements not always (not) allowing the correct civic changes
  
• Improved error logging to know which federation perk is invalid
  

We currently have plans for another update this cycle with some more fixes, including an AI fix to encourage them to recruit an appropriate number of scientists. As with the last few, we plan on putting it on the stellaris_test branch on Tuesday, for release later on in the week.
[h3]What’s After 3.10.4?[/h3]
Tentatively scheduled for next Friday, we plan on putting up a longer open beta over the holidays that seeks to collect feedback regarding some potential balance changes to ship production, upkeep, and research in general.

Stellaris has undergone a significant amount of power creep over the years, and the speed at which we're able to burn through the entire technology tree is much higher than is healthy for the game. Due to the large number of stacking research speed modifiers, repeatable technologies are reached far too early in the game. Another power creep issue mentioned by many players, it's also become trivial to stack large numbers of ship build cost and ship upkeep reduction modifiers.

The Holiday Open Beta will be a feature branch that contains the following changes, which may or may not go into 3.11 (or 3.12, or any release at all for that matter). Similar to how we handled Industrial Districts several years ago, we're intentionally keeping these separated from core 3.11 development, isolating this in a parallel track.

We’ll have a feedback form set up to collect your thoughts, and the Open Beta will run until the middle of January.

[h3]Holiday Open Beta Preliminary Notes[/h3]

• Research Speed Bonuses now usually come with increased Researcher Upkeep.
  • By changing these to throughput bonuses (cost + production), a technology focused empire will require more Consumer Goods or other resources depending on who they use to research. This puts a partial economic break on runaway technology.
• Reduction in most Research Speed bonus modifiers.
  
• The +20% research field technologies have been turned into "Breakthrough" technologies that gate progress to the next tier of research.
  • Whether it be the transistor, the theory of relativity, or faster-than-light travel, occasionally there are technologies that redefine a field of science.
    
    • The intent of these breakthrough technologies is to slow down the front-runners a little bit, while still letting the slower empires get pulled along.
      
  • Once a theory has been proven, it's easier for others to replicate those learnings.
    
  • Breakthrough technologies start off more difficult than regular technologies but have a variant of tech spread - the more nations you have at least low Technological intel on who have already discovered them, the cheaper they are to research (even down to instant research once the theory is commonplace). This tech spread varies based on galaxy size.
    
    • Enigmatic Engineering prevents this tech spread.
      
  • Breakthrough technologies have animated borders to stand out.
• Reduced Output of Researcher Jobs:
  • Researchers and their gestalt equivalents now produce 3 of each research instead of 4
    
  • Head Researchers now produce 4 of each research instead of 6
    
  • The effectiveness of Ministry of Science has been halved
    
  • Astral Researchers now produce 5 physics and 1 of each other research instead of 5 physics and 2 of the other researches.
    
  • All other researchers, such as Necromancers, have been left alone for now
• The Technology curve has been changed from 1000 × 2^n to 500 × (2^n + 3^n), making the difference between an early and late-game tech more distinct.
  
• Replaced or removed most sources of Ship Cost and Upkeep reductions from the game.
  • Military Buildup Agenda now improves ship build speed and reduces claim costs. (It still reduces War Exhaustion on completion.)
    
  • Naval Procurement Officer councilor now improves ship build speed.
    
  • Crusader Spirit civic now improves ship build speed.
    
  • Psionic Supremacy (Eater of Worlds) finisher no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Vyctor's Improved Fleet Logistics trait now reduces ship build costs by 10% instead of 20%.
    
  • Progress Oriented modifier no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Match tradition in the Enmity tree bonus to ship build costs reduced to 5% instead of 10%.
    
  • Master Shipwrights tradition in the Supremacy tree no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Chosen of the Eater of Worlds ship build cost reduction reduced to 5% from 15%, and no longer modifies ship upkeep.
    
  • Military Pioneer trait now reduces starbase upgrade costs instead of ship build costs.
    
  • Shipwright trait no longer reduces ship build costs.
    
  • Reduced penalty the Irenic trait applies to ship build costs.
    
  • Sanctum of the Eater ship upkeep reduction reduced from 10% to 5%.
    
  • Mark of the Instrument ship component no longer reduces ship upkeep.
    
  • Grand Fleet ambition now increases power projection instead of reducing ship upkeep.
    
  • Fleet Supremacy edict no longer reduces ship upkeep.
    
  • Corporate Crusader Spirit now reduces ship upkeep by 5% instead of 10%.
    
  • Bulwark ship upkeep reductions reduced by 50%.
    
  • Logistic Understanding, Armada Logistician, and Gunboat Diplomat traits now reduces ship upkeep while docked​

[h3]#MODJAM2024 Signups are open![/h3]
Over the holiday period, we will be running another Mod Jam. This year’s theme will be revealed on December 12th, and sign ups will close on December 14th. The Community team will be posting weekly Mod Jam updates in place of our weekly Dev Diaries, so you can still get your weekly Stellaris fix.

We’ve currently scheduled the Mod Jam mod to release on January 11th! If you’re interested in participating, you can get more details and sign up here. You can also subscribe to the Mod Jam mod here, and get it as soon as it releases.

Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re proud to announce that signups for #MODJAM2024 are now open! This year our partners at Republic of Gamers are back, with some amazing prizes!



[h3]What is a Mod Jam?[/h3]

Modders will get four weeks to make… something. We don’t tell them what they’re making until the start of the working time and modders are not allowed to use any content they’ve previously published. At the end of the working time, we’ll put everything together in a package and release it. Interested in helping test the Mod Jam mod as we get closer to release? Join us on the Stellaris Official Discord!

Then the Community gets to vote on which something you like the best. At the end of the voting period, the top 10 modders by Community vote then get prizes from our sponsors and merch from the PDS Green Coffers!

[h3]Prizes, you say?[/h3]

This year we’ve paired up again with Republic of Gamers to deliver some great prizes to our winning Modders:

1st Place: ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713 Laptop*
2nd Place: ROG Delta S Wireless Headset*
3rd Place: ROG Spatha X Wireless Mouse*
4th - 10th Place: Stellaris branded Wallet and Keychain

* Exact specifications may vary depending on winning modder’s region

[h3]Well, tell us the theme![/h3]

We’ll reveal the theme on Tuesday, December 12th. Keep an eye out over the Holiday period, because the Mod Jam will be taking over the weekly Dev Diaries starting December 21st, and we’ll be using them to keep you updated on what exactly the Modders are up to as the event progresses, so stay tuned!

[h3]Let me have it now![/h3]

Our current timeline has #MODJAM2024 releasing on January 11, 2024, so you don’t have to wait too long! Subscribe to #MODJAM2024 on the Steam Workshop now, and get it as soon as it releases!

[h3]Sign up today![/h3]

Hey, that’s my line. You can sign up to participate here! And be sure to read the Terms and Conditions!