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Stellaris screenshot
Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy

Stellaris

4.0.14 Patch Released (checksum 1056)


by PDX-Loke

Greetings all,

Another patch is ready for you to download and apply to your copy of Stellaris, improving the gameplay experience in a variety of ways.

4.0.14 is now available via Steam, and soon also on GOG and MS.

Please find the patch notes below.

Stellaris 4.0.14 Patch​


Balance

  • Fixed Hollow Bones being 1/10 as impactful as it should be. Stay away from big planets birds.
  • Incubators modifiers will now be a bit more granular and not go from 30% bonus to -10% growth with 40 pops.
  • Colony Auto-designation now better takes Urban districts into account for flipping to the various Urban-related designations. (We still recommend picking the one you want though. This was mostly intended for the AI)
  • Gestalt empires can now build trade modules on starbases
  • Non-gestalt empires can now build solar panels on starbases
  • Added Logistic traditions for gestalt empires
  • Split Enforcers and Telepaths
  • Refactored the psionic pop output from telepaths to be on the psi corp building instead
  • Introduced Job Efficiency for Psionic Pops modifier where appropriate
  • Added Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  • Added Job Efficiency for Cyborg Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  • Added Job Efficiency for Organic Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  • Empire and Planet Limits for Fallen Empire Buildings now have the following rules:
    • If you stole the plans through artifact diving or were gifted them by the Hive FE: Empire/Planet Limit = number of times you rolled the building, capped at 3
    • If you got the tech through Enigmatic Engineering: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 3
    • If you have Cosmogenesis: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 6
    • If you’re a Fallen Empire: Empire/Planet Limit: Uncapped
    • Note: It is our intention to replace this with a system that turns Fallen Empire building techs into Repeatable Technologies that base the maximum number of how many you can have be tied to the number of times you have researched it. This is likely to be in 4.1, though may sneak into a late 4.0 patch.

UI

  • Reintroduced the Build District and Clear Blocker button in the District Details side panel.
  • Planetary Habitability and Devastation should no longer overlap
  • The column for number of pops in the species view should now correctly display larger numbers of pops without forcing a new line
  • Added a tooltip to make the inability of building on an occupied planet clearer
  • Improved Zone replacement popup

Bugfix

  • Dictatorial Cybervision Enforcers will no longer give themselves an infinite amount of bonuses generating infinite amount of resources
  • Fixed Corporate Angler council positions giving mult modifiers instead of add modifiers
  • Fix occupied planets still adding their production and modifiers to their owners
  • Modifier now scales with pop amount in production box and tooltip of planet view
  • Prevent jobs with 0 workforce being displayed in the Strata production tooltip
  • Assimilating a species now assimilates all armies, colony ships, and leaders of that species
  • Added a 1 day count before VIR's enclave tutorial.
  • Exotic Metabolism tooltip now lists Pop Growth and Habitability.
  • Fixed the energy cost that scales with pops in the Cyberization event "Radical Physiology"
  • Changed the French translation of Research from Enquêter to Recherche
  • Added appropriate effects tooltip for Augmentation Bazaar.
  • The Celestial Orrery Supercomputer now only gives Physicist jobs
  • Removed incompatible tech from Wilderness Agenda option
  • Players can no longer colonize with a prebuilt colony ship if the species isn't allowed to colonize.
  • Fixed a bug with the years_of_peace trigger that made it not evaluate the delay properly, it was always treated as zero
  • Fixed an exploit where people could edit their saved empires to start with late-game rewards and effects.
  • Enforcers now benefit from Specialist modifiers again.
  • Fixed tooltips for Angler civics
  • Fixed tooltips for all Astrometeorology civics
  • Fixed issues with the Astrometeology building for gestalts
  • Fixed the Beastmaster civic tooltip
  • Updated nested tooltips for Civil Education
  • Fixed stability from Byzantine Bureaucracy not applying
  • Streamlined the tooltip for Catalytic Processing
  • Fixed Wild Swarm mentioning ships when combined with Cordyceptic Drones
  • Improved the Dark Consortium tooltip
  • Contingency will no longer fail to sterilize branch offices on a planet
  • Demolishing a building on an occupied planet is no longer possible
  • Blocked Resource Processing Center technology for Wilderness

AI
Note: These changes are just the start, we have more significant changes planned for upcoming patches. In the meantime, we recommend turning difficulty scaling off if you are finding higher difficulty settings far too easy.

  • AI empires will focus a bit more on Industry and Alloys.
  • AI empires value capital building upgrades more.
  • AI empires are more likely to build Anchorages if their naval capacity usage is high.
  • Adjusted the bonuses AI empires receive on higher difficulties. AI empires will now also gain bonuses to automatic resettlement on higher difficulties.

Stability

  • Fixed OOS with different amounts of popgroups
  • Fixed a Ship Design related OOS
  • Fixed another possible OOS at reconnection
  • Fixed CTD that happened on the planet UI for Contingency taken planets

Modding

  • Prescripted empires' starting flags now need to be defined in the 'prescripted_flags' folder

We hope you will enjoy these changes even if they happen to thwart your well-conceived exploits. Do let us know if you devise new ones. Thank you!

Stellaris Dev Diary #385 - AI Benchmarks


written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

The 4.0.13 update released today with the following changes:

[expand type=details expanded=false]

Stellaris 4.0.13 Patch


Improvements
  • Behemoth Fury is now available to Wilderness Empires.
  • Improved tooltips for the following civics:
  • Functional Architecture/Constructobot
  • Environmentalist
  • Astro-mining Drones
  • Maintenance Protocols
  • Ascensionists
  • Augmentation Bazaars
  • Brand Loyalty
  • Death Cults
  • Dimensional Worship
  • Balance
  • Mutagenic Habitability now counts all planet types as ideal for upgrading Gaiaseeders
  • Dramatically increased the draw chance for the Mineral Purification, Global Energy Management and Food Processing technologies
  • Rebalanced the Pleasure Seeker civics to transform Civilians into Hedonists
  • Logistic Drones are now Complex Drones not Menial Drones


Bugfix
  • Fixed invaded pre-ftls not becoming biotrophies
  • People once more die when they are put in the Lathe
  • Bio-Swarmer missiles can now be used by all biological ships with medium weapon slots (including defensive platforms)
  • Pops that are being pampered will now be forcibly switched to the correct living standard
  • Replacing a district specialisation no longer destroys CyberCreed buildings that should be kept
  • Corrected a tooltip bug where a planet would display itself as a possible migration target.
  • Fixed capitalisation for resources in trade policies
  • Updated assorted modifiers that still referred to Clerks
  • A Trade deficit now causes Job Efficiency and Empire Size issues
  • Fixed the tooltip for the Polymelic trait
  • Armies now protect 200 pops from raiding, not 2
  • Blocked the Federation Code technology for some empires, for example homicidals. To draw the tech, the empire is also required to be in contact with someone they can form a federation with.
  • Blocked the Development focus task Form a Federation for some empires, for example homicidals
  • Added swaps for some empires, for example homicidals, for the Development focus rewards Federation Code, Xeno Diplomacy, and Xeno Relations
  • Updated the Colony view tab mentioned in the hint of the focus task Enact a Planetary Decision to say Management
  • CyberCreed pops with Ritualistic Implants can now colonise planets
  • Fixed Recycled and Luxurious traits not applying to Roboticists
  • Catalytic Processing Civic now lists correct information regarding job swap
  • Cost for repairing orbital rings when you use bioships is now correctly calculated
  • Gale Speed trait gained from Defeat no longer causes errors
  • Fixed scope for LeaderShipSurvivalReason
  • Fixed scope bug for ruler in leader_election_weight
  • Fixed Worker Coop gaining Elite strata jobs in too many places and tidied up the civic tooltip
  • Updated tooltip for Warrior Culture civic
  • Added a pre-list colon to the Feudal Society civic's tooltip
  • The everychanging stone can no longer cause artisans to have negative mineral upkeep
  • Gave the Neural Chorus advanced authority the pop growth speed modifier that had accidentally been assigned to Memory Aggregator
  • The Planetary Supercomputer no longer has an empire cap of 1
  • The Research Institute/Planetary Supercomputer no longer give scientist capacity
  • Added dashes to Traits tooltips and list items
  • Fixed trigger logic for criminal syndicates and federations
  • Fixed Offspring Bioships not being visible in game
  • Fixed Offspring Bioships not being labelled as non-offspring ships in the ship designer
  • The Machine Uprising will no longer spawn 100 machine pops for every 1 missing housing. However the pop-rework seems to have handled 6 million machine pops okay.
  • Stopped removing occupation armies for bombarded and invaded planets on savegame load
  • Repairing ruined buildings in zones is now always possible.


Performance
  • Flattened pop job modifier node into planet one
  • Made clearing modifiers a fire and forget job


Stability
  • Fixed a possible OOS when a player leaves the game.
  • Fix CTD when generating a Cosmic Storm mesh.
  • Fixed a random freeze when loading save with stations containing multiple defence platforms.

[TAG-80]
We expect the 4.0.14 release will be next week (probably on Tuesday), and is expected to include some fixes to a few infinite loops and some select balance changes (like splitting up Enforcers and Telepaths again). It will be a short work week here in Sweden, so it’s likely to be the only update of the week.

As I mentioned last week, with multiplayer stability largely handled, AI is one of our next focuses. Today I want to talk about AI benchmarks, and have a discussion with you about how we should measure “success”.

What Makes a Good AI?



The AI in Stellaris has always been designed as very reactive, and AI personality has a massive impact on their behavior. Our goal is for our AI empires to feel like actors in the galactic play - acting in a manner consistent with their Origins, Authorities, Civics, and Ethics rather than always picking the “meta” play.

They do still need to put up a bit of a challenge though, especially at higher difficulties.

The first economic goal we make for our AI is “please don’t collapse in an economic death spiral”, and it’s actually far better at that in 4.0 than it was in 3.x. The current AI does NOT meet the second “provide an adequate challenge” goal though.

One of the fundamental tools we have for our AIs are resource targets in their economic plans. They’ll strive to reach those targets, and many of these are set as “scaling” - if they meet the target, they’ll raise the target the next month. This attempts to ensure that they’ll keep thirsting for ever larger research and alloy numbers (or food if they use bioships!) as is appropriate. This is one of the tools we also use to make them exhibit their ethics - Materialists scale their Research targets faster than other empires, so they’ll inherently be more likely to build more Research specializations, while Spiritualists are more likely to have a lot of Unity specializations.

Ironically, improving AI tends to consume any benefits we carved out through performance improvements. The stronger the AI, the more stuff they have - fleets, colonies, and so on.

Benchmarking



One way to decide whether or not the AI is performing up to expectations is through benchmarking - what kind of fleet power, alloy generation, and research generation should they have by 2230, 2250, 2300, and so on? Around what year should they hit 10k fleet power?

Then there come questions around whether the benchmarks should differ based on personality type. Should it be different if they’re Democratic Crusaders vs. Peaceful Traders? Or does differentiating them there make the friendlier empires too weak?

I’ve got my own set of benchmarks that come from running 3.14 and from the multiplayer community, and in general, I’m okay with Grand Admiral being significantly harder than it was in 3.14. but I’m interested to hear what you all strive for.

How much research and alloy production do you try to have 10 years, 30 years, 100 years, and when the end-game crisis comes calling? (Include your preferred difficulty settings and galaxy sizes as well if you could, as well as if you change any other important settings like tech costs.)

What’s Next?



We’re going to continue with 4.0 post release support.

Since the next two weeks are both short weeks in Sweden, our next Stellaris Dev Diary will be June 12th. (You’ll be hearing from me in patch notes in the meantime though.)

4.0.11 Patch Released (checksum 3f89)


by PDX-Loke

Hello everyone,

Our latest and greatest patch for Stellaris has now been deployed. 4.0.11 is available for download via Steam.

This patch contains plenty of bugfixes, balancing tweaks, performance optimizations, as well as resolutions to the most common out of sync issues. There are a few more of those still under investigation but this patch should let you have a more stable multiplayer experience.

Please find the patch notes below.
[expand type=details expanded=false]

Stellaris 4.0.11 Patch



Bugfix
  • Fix Faction resource output being exponential
  • Evosymbionts now have a description
  • Fixed that eating a baby didn't give you any DNA or genetic insights
  • Fixed the first tier of the physics lab requiring access to volatile motes to research
  • A stray K should no longer haunt players that foolishly opened a certain window
  • Explore a Wormhole' Focus Card is now 'Traverse a Wormhole', clarifying that you have to travel through it
  • Fixed typo in "Colony View" Databank entry
  • Added localization string for +3 Unity planetary feature
  • Federation Cohesion tooltip now mentions Officials instead of Envoys
  • Death Priests now correctly get +3 base unity output while a sacrifice edict is in effect
  • Hard Reset event "Our [empire] Legacy" event now works as intended
  • Observers can open the build queue of the empire they're observing.
  • Fixed a case in which virtual ascended empires could get unworkable fallen empire jobs on habitats
  • Fixed adSul not having any resource districts after terraforming it
  • Species with Mutagenic Habitability now shouldn’t lose it when they bloom from Gaia-Seeders
  • Xenophobic Pharma State Empires will no longer start with 2 Medical Centers leading to both being destroyed at game start.
  • Broken Shackle Angler Empires will no longer spawn with a farming district in their city slot.
  • Amoeboid Pacification Empire modifier now displays effects
  • Enslaves species located in Synaptic Lathe will no longer switch back and forward between neural chips jobs and slave repurposing job.
  • Fixed the Auto-Curating Vault (and equivalents) not having an additional bonus on ringworlds
  • The Organic Paradise building can no longer be built directly
  • Nexus districts no longer mention Logistic Drones when they shouldn't
  • Fixed machine empires starting with the wrong number of pops
  • Neglected Bio-Trophies now show as unemployed
  • Fixed tooltips for Angler civics
  • Fixed tooltips for all Astrometeorology civics
  • Fixed issues with the Astrometeology building for gestalts
  • Fixed the Beastmaster civic tooltip
  • Updated nested tooltips for Civil Education
  • Fixed stability from Byzantine Bureaucracy not applying
  • Fixed Wild Swarm mentioning ships when combined with Cordyceptic Drones
  • Streamlined the tooltip for Catalytic Processing
  • Improved the Dark Consortium tooltip
  • Fix starting leaders often missing a background job.
  • Fixed translation error in Korean text about lack of modifier.
  • Added missing concept tooltip for District Specializations
  • Fix the ship designer autogenerate checkbox sometimes not working correctly
  • Weather Forecasting Mode is now listed correctly in Storm Chasers description
  • Added Augmentor job description in english
  • Fix the amount of pops affected by the voidworms bombardment
  • Fix incorrect Megastructures build conditions tooltip
  • The Synaptic Lathe should once again purge pops. (This will not retroactively affect existing saves.)
  • Fixed a bug that prevented upgrading building that have planet limit set on them.
  • Balance
  • Increased the number of Bio-Trophy jobs provided by most sources
  • Added the Creativity Exhibition Vault as an equivalent for the Auto-Curating Vault for Rogue Servitors
  • Machine Intelligences no longer give a growth penalty to organic pops
  • District specialisations that add unity jobs no longer give coordinator jobs for Rogue Servitors instead they give Bio-Trophy jobs
  • Bio-Trophies now increase the Job Efficiency for Complex Drones instead of their resource output
  • Rogue Servitors no longer start with an additional 2000 drones
  • Rogue Servitors now start with 2000 Bio-Trophies instead of 500
  • Rogue Servitors now have access to the Sanctuary Enclave district specialisation, granting a large number of bio-trophy jobs
UI

  • Notification Icons shan't be blurry no more
  • Added more visible habitability information in the planet view.
Performance

  • Reduced a number of unnecessary re-calculations of ship designs
  • Sub-species with identical traits and rights will periodically merge together to reduce the total number of species and pop groups.
Stability

  • OOS RANDOM_COUNT fix (caused by dependency between planet and galactic object ftl inhibitors)
  • Fix common OOS related to ship behavior resulting in RANDOM_COUNT and NUM_MISSILE as well as many other OOS codes
  • Fixed RANDOM_COUNT OOS caused by pop group assembly tooltip.
  • Fix CTD when calculating Branch office income
Modding

  • Added new effect: set_planet_purge_type. Using it on synthetic lathe to have pops purge
  • Replaced base_cap_amount with planet_limit for buildings

[TAG-90]

Thank you for your continued feedback! The team is still going strong so please keep reporting any and all encountered issues.

See you again soon.

4.0.10 Patch Released (checksum 10cb)



Greetings everyone,

Today we bring you a fresh patch, fixing various issues in BioGenesis and 4.0.
4.0.10 should now be available for download via Steam, with GOG and MS Store to follow.

Please find the patch notes below.

Stellaris 4.0.10 Patch


Improvements

  • Bloomed Biomass is now prioritized if unqueueing a Building that costs Biomass on Gaia worlds.
  • Cleaned up Terraforming options for Wilderness empires if they did not start with that planet type to avoid the painful game loop of colonizing a terrible world so that you could then pay in energy to improve it.
  • Candidates that are not the primary species of an empire now have a reduced chance of being elected in Non-Xenophilic, and under the proper circumstances, non-Selective Kinship Empires.

Bugfix

  • Augmentation Bazaars civic no longer claims to increase trade per cybernetic trait
  • Wilderness Empires will no longer be offered Gene Seed Purification
  • The final tier of the Gaia Seeder building will no longer be destroyed in Wilderness Empires
  • Wilderness Biomass is now more likely to gain the Bloomed trait
  • Democratic Transference will no longer be granting hundred times more efficiency than expected.
  • Biological Ship empires should now be able to grow Fledgling Dragons when playing the Here Be Dragons origin.
  • Fixed the Expand Planet Decision for Wilderness refunding the Biomass spent
  • Updated the "Weak" trait tooltip
  • Fixed outdated Overtuned Traits tooltips
  • Restored icons to the "Win a War" Focus Card
  • Total War Empires can now complete the "Win a War" Focus Card
  • Terravores will no longer be give the "Terraform 3 Worlds" Focus Task
  • Delicious and Felsic species traits now give +100% job efficiency to livestock jobs
  • Secrets of Inetian Traders' vanilla modifier now reduces trade fees.
  • Fixed the Mutagenic Spas descriptions because they weren't displaying the correct job swap.
  • Fixed Clear Design for space fauna duplicating components and not clearing anything.
  • Fix some incorrect text in civics tooltips during empire creation
  • Slaves and purged pop groups no longer listed as being demoted
  • Bio-trophies and some other jobs cannot be automated anymore, as funny as it was for the Rogue Servitors to be so sad at the empty domes and make animatronic trophies to care for.
  • Fix some modifiers missing from job production tooltips.
  • Fix to Tiyanki Graveyard animation
  • Xenophobes are once again prevented from giving Full Citizenship and Military Service to Xenos
  • Adjustments to Xeno Mediator to be correct for 4.0
  • You can no longer build rural support district specialisations in urban districts if the planet type does not have the district type it would support
  • AI will stop losing colonies due to resettlement
  • AI will stop resettling from and into planets being colonized

Balance

  • Augmentation Bazaars grant access to Augmentation Merchants which combine the benefits of Merchants and Executives in one
  • Hyperlane Breach Points and Hyperspace Slipstreams technologies now also increase the number of pops that can move each month due to Automatic Resettlement by +25%
  • Doubled the effect Transit Hubs have on Automatic Resettlement to +200%.

UI

  • Significantly improved Pop Job's production tooltip and details panel
  • Buildings in the Planet UI do not escape their frames anymore.
  • Updated the size of the Districts backgrounds, so their sizes and their padding are evenly distributed.
  • Updated the District Cap Background size and also the district slots padding.
  • Added more padding and even margins for the Planet UI.
  • Updated the look of Planet Production and Planet Deficit section of the Planet UI.
  • When opening the leaders view, the Available Positions window will now always start closed.

Performance

  • Reduced the amount of pop groups by adding a mechanic for merging smaller similar ones.
  • Calculate the planet upkeep/produce/profit during the monthly tick and use the cached amount for all the calculations
  • Prevented monthly job assignment from triggering again the next day
  • Reduced memory allocations between monthly job distributions
  • Tweaked the grain size for planetary threaded updates

Stability

  • Fix common OOS related to wrongly recalculated planet profit (again, for real this time)
  • Some changes that are an attempt to fix a RANDOM_COUNT OOS that we cannot reliably reproduce internally.
  • Fixed crash when opening leader level up message if there is no trait to pick.
  • Fix CTDs related to Behemoth
  • Fixed OOS due to ship designer using synchronized random

Modding

  • Add can_be_automated token for jobs that cannot be automated


We shall carry on and will be back with more at a later date. Until then!

Stellaris Dev Diary #384 - The Art of BioGenesis



Hello everyone!

Today the artists are excited to bring you the Stellaris Art Blast, but first I wanted a moment to talk about the patching of 4.0 and where we’re going.

4.0.10 will be releasing today (which makes four updates this week!), with the following changes:

Stellaris 4.0.10 Patch


Improvements

  • Bloomed Biomass is now prioritized if unqueing a Building that costs Biomass on Gaia worlds.
  • Cleaned up Terraforming options for Wilderness empires if they did not start with that planet type to avoid the painful game loop of colonizing a terrible world so that you could then pay in energy to improve it.
  • Candidates that are not the primary species of an empire now have a reduced chance of being elected in Non-Xenophilic, and under the proper circumstances, non-Selective Kinship Empires.

Bugfix

  • Augmentation Bazaars civic no longer claims to increase trade per cybernetic trait
  • Wilderness Empires will no longer be offered Gene Seed Purification
  • The final tier of the Gaia Seeder building will no longer be destroyed in Wilderness Empires
  • Wilderness Biomass is now more likely to gain the Bloomed trait
  • Democratic Transference will no longer be granting hundred times more efficiency than expected.
  • Biological Ship empires should now be able to grow Fledgling Dragons when playing the Here Be Dragons origin.
  • Fixed the Expand Planet Decision for Wilderness refunding the Biomass spent
  • Updated the "Weak" trait tooltip
  • Fixed outdated Overtuned Traits tooltips
  • Restored icons to the "Win a War" Focus Card
  • Total War Empires can now complete the "Win a War" Focus Card
  • Terravores will no longer be give the "Terraform 3 Worlds" Focus Task
  • Delicious and Felsic species traits now give +100% job efficiency to livestock jobs
  • Secrets of Inetian Traders' vanilla modifier now reduces trade fees.
  • Fixed the Mutagenic Spas descriptions because they weren't displaying the correct job swap.
  • Fixed Clear Design for space fauna duplicating components and not clearing anything.
  • Fix some incorrect text in civics tooltips during empire creation
  • Slaves and purged pop groups no longer listed as being demoted
  • Bio-trophies and some other jobs cannot be automated anymore, as funny as it was for the Rogue Servitors to be so sad at the empty domes and make animatronic trophies to care for.
  • Fix some modifiers missing from job production tooltips.
  • Fix to Tiyanki Graveyard animation
  • Xenophobes are once again prevented from giving Full Citizenship and Military Service to Xenos

Balance

  • Augmentation Bazaars grant access to Augmentation Merchants which combine the benefits of Merchants and Executives in one
  • Hyperlane Breach Points and Hyperspace Slipstreams technologies now also increase the number of pops that can move each month due to Automatic Resettlement by +25%
  • Doubled the effect Transit Hubs have on Automatic Resettlement to +200%.

UI

  • Significantly improved Pop Job's production tooltip and details panel
  • Buildings in the Planet UI do not escape their frames anymore.
  • Updated the size of the Districts backgrounds, so their sizes and their padding are evenly distributed.
  • Updated the District Cap Background size and also the district slots padding.
  • Added more padding and even margins for the Planet UI.
  • Updated the look of Planet Production and Planet Deficit section of the Planet UI.
  • When opening the leaders view, the Available Positions window will now always start closed.

Performance

  • Reduce amount of pop groups by adding mechanic for merge smaller similar ones.
  • Calculate the planet upkeep/produce/profit during the monthly tick and use the cached amount for all the calculations
  • Reduced memory allocations between monthly job distributions
  • Tweaked the grain size for planetary threaded updates

Stability

  • Fix common OOS related to wrongly recalculated planet profit (again, for real this time)
  • Some changes that are an attempt to fix a RANDOM_COUNT OOS that we cannot reliably reproduce internally.
  • Fixed crash when opening leader level up message if there is no trait to pick.
  • Fixed OOS due to ship designer using synchronized random

Modding

  • Add can_be_automated token for jobs that cannot be automated


So far we have released a total of 9 patches but we have not yet reached a place where we want to be. Currently, our major priorities are on multiplayer stability and performance. Our goal is to get the Out of Sync errors under control as soon as possible. As these are notoriously difficult to track down I can’t guarantee it over the next week, but we remain committed to getting back to MP stability. As soon as these are out of the way, improving the AI is next on my hit-list. In addition the team will also keep focusing on the most important issues that we gather from your feedback and our internal testing.

My current plan is to have two patches next week, with the first scheduled for Tuesday. We’ll be evaluating this on a daily basis in case there’s anything that shows up that we deem requires a hotfix, and of course will continue afterwards as long as needed.

Many thanks to everyone who has been reporting bugs and providing save games, it’s helped us tremendously. If you run into crashes, reporting them really helps, especially if you can provide a few lines about what you were doing immediately before it.

Now I’ll yield the floor to Anton.
- Eladrin​


Hello there!

As courtesy dictates; Introductions first. I’m Anton and I have the honor and privilege to manage our extremely incredibly talented Stellaris Art Team here in Stockholm.

It’s become a bit of a tradition that after each release, we bring you a Dev Diary from our team, where we get to talk about (and show off!) the art behind that release. And yes, this is that Dev Diary.

So welcome to The Art of BioGenesis & 4.0!

You’ve most likely already watched all the “Art of…” videos we’ve uploaded to the Stellaris YouTube channel (right? RIGHT!?), including the latest one where some of our artists discuss how we approached BioGenesis and the reasoning behind certain creative decisions. But those videos only scratch the surface of what we’ve done.



Fact is, and these numbers are fresh from JIRA, that we logged 870 workdays (that’s over 25 million seconds) on creating art for BioGenesis across all disciplines. That’s nothing short of both impressive and amazing.

Fantastic job, Team!

Now: before we dive into the Meat and Bones (see what I did there?) of this Dev Diary - I wanted to mention two quick things that might come in handy as you scroll through the post:

1. If you click the artist’s name and title (the headline, in bold), you’ll be taken to their ArtStation page, basically their portfolio, where you can check out even more of their incredible work.

2. Likewise, clicking the project title (also in bold) will take you directly to the specific project page on their ArtStation-page.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for now. So before I hand it over to our Art Director, I just want to say Thank you for all the great feedback on our work, we genuinely appreciate it. I know I speak for the whole Art Team when I say that we love creating the art you see and the assets you get to play with in the game.

We can’t wait to show you what’s coming next!



Meat Ships!​



For as long as I’ve been at this studio, one request has echoed louder than the rest: Bio Ships. Or, more affectionately (and possibly unsettlingly), meat ships. Some folks were more refined in their petitions - opting for the elegant “Organic Vessels” or “Biological Shipsets” - but the dream was always the same: meaty, fleshy, bony, and squishy starcraft.

With BioGenesis, we finally got to bring that dream to life. And not just one shipset - two. In true Ascension Pack fashion, we had the chance to explore both sides of the biomass coin: the menacing Spinovores and the noble Shellcraft. Two very different flavors of organic ships, two entirely new challenges for our art team.

We usually do hard-surface ships. Angular, mechanical, symmetrical. Bio ships? They’re messy. They're weird. They’re alive. (Are they alive? That’s one for the players to determine ;-) )That meant learning new visual language, new workflows, and in some cases, unlearning habits we’ve built over years. And honestly? It was a blast.

This was a rare chance to stretch some artistic muscles we don’t always get to use. And the team made it count. Every tentacle, plate, gland, and chitinous hull—painstakingly sculpted, painted, and polished with the same care we give our most beloved fleets.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: Our team is small, but they deliver like giants. Year after year, they match (and often outmatch) the output of teams twice or three times their size. Every line, every pixel, every polygon has to carry its weight. No room for fluff. Just art. Just bone. Just muscle and protein.

Hope you enjoy the weird, wonderful biology of BioGenesis. We sure did.

-Scott Austin-

Art Director, Paradox Interactive



Gabrielle Rodrigues - UI Artist


Biogenesis UI Art







BioGenesis Event Image





4.0 UI Art





Cassandra Lindquist - 2D UI Artist

















Lloyd Drake-Brockman - Concept Artist


Illustrations and Event Images





Deep Space Citadel





BioGenesis Ships - Concept Art










Felix Englund - Concept Artist


BioGenesis Portraits













Illustrations and Event Images







Behemoth Concept Art





Biogenesis Ships - Concept Art











Tim Wiberg - 3D Artist


Behemoth - 3D Model












Shellcraft - 3D Models







Spinovore - 3D Models







Emma Quer - 3D Artist
BioGenesis Ship Models










Deep Space Citadel - 3D Model






4.0.7, 4.0.8, and 4.0.9 Patches Released (checksum a854)


by pdx_struby

G'day,

The 4.0.7 patch for Stellaris 4.0 and BioGenesis is available now on Steam.

This patch includes some fixes to stability and performance, as well as a host of other tweaks and bugfixes.

Stellaris 4.0.7 Patch​


Bugfix

  • Localization has been updated for most text
  • Species modification cost is no longer divided by 100 twice
  • Machine Nexus Designation no longer mentions Amenities
  • Tech-World Designation description is more specific
  • Behemoth death animation particles are now spawned correctly
  • Fixed an edge case that would fail to remove the tier 3 behemoth after completing the Mind Meld special project
  • The Fallen Shipyard Deposit will no longer be creating unworkable jobs for Gestalt Empires.
  • The Nanite Research Complex now grants improved modifiers compared to the base version, giving a reason to build it
  • Biological Titans now count for your titan cap. I hope you had your fun with titan only fleets.
  • Random ethics changing should now work properly and not complain about invalid pop group
  • The shipyard should always display ship design names for military ships again.
  • Ship Designer will no longer allow to save a ship design with the name of the design with a different ship size.
  • Cleaned up a few tooltips not being updated for the new 100 pop system including Artifact Relays
  • Assimilating species with traits that are incompatible with Wilderness, such as Nascent Stage, now removes said traits
  • Fixed duplicated description for Numistic Shrine
  • Now only applies empire size penalty on edict costs, not the full empire size
  • Simulation Sites and their upgrades now increase Unity output instead of Upkeep on their planets
  • Effective Councilor Skill and Effective Ruler Skill finally add to agenda progress speed
  • Refined timeline localization
  • Planetary Administration and other buildings, and General Traits now correctly give Armies
  • The Perpetual Lightning modifier now has a description
  • Horizon Needle description now specifies where it has to be built
  • Fix Automated Workforce not applying correctly district level
  • Multiple auto modding traits will now work together
  • Cleaned up a few tooltips not being updated for the new 100 pop system including Artifact Relays

Balance

  • Refitting a DSC no longer costs unity
  • Reduced the amount of Research added to Civilians from the State Academy and Center of Guidance by 33%
  • Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Autochthon Monument, their upgrades, and their MegaCorp variants
  • Added a Minerals Upkeep to Maintenance Drones from the Simulation Site, their upgrades, and their Hive Mind variants
  • Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Ministry of Culture
  • Added a Consumer Good Upkeep to Civilians from the Strengthened Government modifiers from Under One Rule
  • Added a minor Consumer Good Upkeep to the Trickle Up Economics Tradition
  • Eternal Vigilance now fills out your Defense Platform capacity to 50% instead of fully

UI

  • Leader upkeep is now rounded to 1 decimal for consistency
  • Clicking top bar resource a second time now always closes the market view
  • Fixed recommended DLC staying visible after exiting the empire selection view
  • Performance​
  • Improved performance when hovering over population number in planet view
  • Fixed a major performance issue caused by outliner starbase entries
  • Triggered Planet Pop Group Modifiers should have improved performance (and should use triggered_planet_pop_group_modifier_for_all if it will apply to all pops on the planet)

Stability

  • Fixed common OOS by recalculating the profit instead of using the cached data (COUNTRY_RESOURCE)
  • Fixed CTD when dlc is not readable for unknown reasons
  • Fixed CTD when events without options are timing out
  • Fixed invalid memory reads when finishing species modifications
  • Fixed invalid memory reads as a result from on_pop_growth on actions
  • Fixed invalid memory reads as a result from on_pop_displaced and/or on_pop_purged on actions
  • Fixed expansion planner species entry crashing in tooltip
  • Fixed replace zone confirmation popup sometimes crashing
  • Fixed crash in grow_pops console command
  • Fixes ground combat CTD

Modding

  • local_pop_amount is now provided to on_pop_group_resettled on action with the amount of pops resettled
  • Removed NGameplay.MAX_PLANET_POPS define as it's not used anywhere anymore
  • Remove obsolete defense_armies_add modifier, in favor of planet_defense_armies_add
  • Removed build_pops console command and changed grow_pops to do growth, assembly and decline
  • Added triggered_planet_pop_group_modifier_for_all for triggered planet pop group modifiers that are intended to be split across all pops on the planet


After the deployment of the 4.0.7 update, we discovered an issue in the French localization that would lead to a crash. The 4.0.8 hotfix has been released to resolve this.

Stellaris 4.0.8 Patch​


Stability

  • Fixed a circular dependency in the French localization that would cause a crash.


We will continue to work diligently on this release to bring you the quality you deserve. Please continue to post any issues you find in the Bug Reports section of the Stellaris forums. The more details there are, with attached save games, the more likely we'll be able to fix it.

Until next time, bye!

Edit: One more for tonight. A 4.0.9 hotfix has also been released, reverting an OOS fix we attempted for (COUNTRY_RESOURCES) that was causing incredible performance issues. We will attempt to have a comprehensive fix for the COUNTRY_RESOURCES OOS in the patch planned for this Thursday.

Stellaris 4.0.9 Patch​


Performance

  • REVERTED an attempted fix for an Out-of-Sync error (COUNTRY_RESOURCES) that was causing serious performance issues.

4.0.7 Steam Open Beta (checksum 9128)


by Eladrin

We’ve put an open beta up on Steam with some of the fixes that we have scheduled for the 4.0.7 patch, currently planned for next Tuesday. It’s likely that there will be more changes in the final 4.0.7 release, and as a preliminary changelog some of these may be removed if testing indicates unforeseen issues.

This includes a workaround for the common COUNTY_RESOURCES out-of-sync that many players have encountered in multiplayer, and more localization strings for most languages. (Russian, unfortunately, did not arrive in time to make this build. It will be updated when 4.0.7 actually releases.) There's another crash related to Terraforming Candidates that we found and fixed internally, but it hasn't made this release.

To opt into the Stellaris 4.0.7 Open Beta:
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 4.0.7 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.

Stellaris 4.0.7 Open Beta​


Bugfix

  • Localization updated for most languages. (Russian unfortunately did not arrive in time for this build.)
  • Effective Councilor Skill and Effective Ruler Skill finally add to agenda progress speed
  • Species modification cost is no longer divided by 100 twice
  • Machine Nexus Designation no longer mentions Amenities,
  • Tech-World Designation description is more specific.
  • Behemoth death animation particles are now spawned correctly
  • Fixed an edge case that would fail to remove the tier 3 behemoth after completing the Mind Meld special project
  • The Fallen Shipyard Deposit will no longer be creating unworkable jobs for Gestalt Empires.
  • The Nanite Research Complex now grants improved modifiers compared to the base version, giving a reason to build it.
  • Biological Titans now count for your titan cap. I hope you had your fun with titan only fleets.
  • Random ethics changing should now work properly and not complain about invalid pop group
  • The shipyard should always display ship design names for military ships again.

Balance

  • Refitting a DSC no longer costs unity

Stability

  • fix common OOS by recalculating the profit instead of using the cached data (COUNTRY_RESOURCE)
  • Fixed CTD when dlc is not readable for unknown reasons

UI

  • Fixed recommended DLC staying visible after exiting the empire selection view.

Modding

  • local_pop_amount is now provided to on_pop_group_resettled on action with the amount of pops resettled


Thank you for playing Stellaris!

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4.0.6 Patch Released (checksum aa83)

Hello,

Our most recent patch has been readied and released.

This smaller update contains fixes to the remainder of the common crashes reported after the initial release, and we hope it will give you all a stable weekend of continued exploration of 4.0 and BioGenesis.

Please find the patch notes below.

Stellaris 4.0.6 Patch


[expand type=details expanded=false]
Bugfix
  • Fixed the preftl.180 event having no options for Ever Hungry empires.
  • The Avatar Cortex building for wilderness should no longer delete itself upon being upgraded to max level.

Stability
  • Prevent CTD from a district containing less built Specializations than expected to
  • Fixed crash when an event has no valid options.
  • Fixed one more CTD in government view using invalid species data
  • Fixed CTD when cleaning up armies on country being destroyed
  • Modding
  • CreatePopGroup effect no longer creates any pop group for invalid species.


Our work continues and we're looking forward to bring you all the fixes and improvements lined up.

Talk to you again next week!

4.0.5 Patch Released (checksum 408d)

Greetings everyone,

Our latest and greatest patch has arrived, carrying plenty of fixes and tweaks to improve your BioGenesis and 4.0 playthroughs.

Please find the patch notes below:

Stellaris 4.0.5 Patch Notes


[expand type=details expanded=false]
Improvement

  • Converting a planet into a hive world or machine world now preserves the generator, mining and farming jobs. Known Issue: The special districts on these planets do not swap names or icons to rural districts.
  • Void Dwellers, Aquatics and Cave Dwellers now grant their robots the relevant trait when they invent robots
  • Updated multiple Databank articles, such as Buildings, Jobs, Housing, and Resettlement
  • FE buildings have been made available to Wilderness empires (under the same restrictions as normal), and have received an additional biomass cost.
  • The fallen materialist's Master Archive now grants additional research options
  • The spiritualist fallen empire's shrine now offers improved shroud communing
  • Font of Knowledge now includes all of the 4.0 research buildings

Bugfix

  • Fixed Pearl Divers not mentioning both a food and mineral upkeep in the tooltip
  • Fixed some duplicated text on the strong and very strong traits
  • Blocked Behemoths from laying eggs in combat
  • Fixed the Artifact Relay decision for hive minds
  • Fixed the Galactic Market Nomination decision
  • Fixed Fanatical Purifiers and Devouring Swarm getting the 'Declare a Rival' Empire Focus
  • Bio Titans built in GDF service should now be made of meat and not metal
  • Fixes ethics divergence always switching the entire pop group instead of amount
  • The Automated Curation Algorithms technology will no longer be offered to Wilderness Empires
  • Colonization can not be started again if there's already a colony ship in progress.
  • Increased the amount of workforce Wilderness pops gain to 99999, this way if you ever have more than 1000 of a job the wilderness won't start trying to employ pops like a normal empire
  • Wilderness Empires will no longer be able to build the automation buildings only to destroy them at the start of the next month
  • The Automation Buildings should only show up in a research option once now instead of four times.
  • Fixed multiple pre-FTL buildings sticking around after their owners had been invaded
  • Advanced AIs now start with some extra unity
  • Genocidal Necrophage empires no longer start with a Chamber of Elevation
  • Incompatible Cybernetic Creed buildings are removed from the building list when you embrace a Creed
  • Finishing Biomorphosis while having 7 tradition trees shouldn't reward a ghost tradition tree
  • Fixed the Planetary Supercomputer demanding paperclips
  • Permanent Employment now correctly starts with 400 zombies
  • Added missing loc from Sanctuary World designation tooltip
  • Scavenger Bot is now named correctly in the Timeline Event.
  • You can no longer ruin your game-start economy by focusing on astro-mining while using resource consolidation to have no mining stations in your home system (Resource Consolidation and Astro Mining Drones now exclude each other)
  • Fix issue where fleet/ship stats were not updated correctly when modifiers changed
  • Fix modifiers not having an effect on displayed Fleet Power
  • Biomimetic now applies a 50% workforce bonus to roboticist and replicator jobs
  • Bodysnatchers now may edit Population Controls, similar to Necrophages.
  • The War Fragment will no longer ask you to declare war on empires you have branch offices on. Profit comes first.
  • Officials can now get Architectural Focus trait from Resourceful Ascension event
  • Eternal Vigilance now also generates Defense Platforms for Deep Space Citadels
  • Planet and slave market tooltips will correctly include dystopian specialist jobs into the general specialists list.
  • Fixed an issue where if you gained the jump drive tech before researching level 2 and 3 hyperdrives, your science ships and constructors would not be equipped with jump drives
  • Fixed a bug that may have sometimes caused pop decline to be determined incorrectly on planets with multiple species.
  • The Empire Focus "Build an Agricultural District" now requires food use to draw
  • The Empire Focus "Finish First Contact" can now be completed
  • The Empire Focuses "Have 1000 Consumer Goods" and "Have 1000 Food" have been blocked for ineligible empires
  • The Empire Focus "Conquer a Homeworld" is blocked for empires that lack an interest in politics
  • Empire Focus "Sign a Research Agreement" is blocked for homicidal empires
  • Fatal Mutations no longer cause complete planetary extinction
  • Pox Bombardment for some weird reason no longer works on mechanical beings
  • Armageddon and Pox Bombardment are once again capable of bombing your enemies into the stone-age (tomb-world)
  • Fixed the Identity Repository scaling at 100x the value it should
  • Fixed a rare case of the Fallen Empire Building Received notification not telling you that you had unlocked the Sky Dome.
  • Refugees have returned to their normal behavior, no longer will people flee from the devouring swarm by running back to the devouring swarm.
  • Wilderness Biomass will no longer refuse to work simple drone jobs, back to work you malleable pile of goo!
  • Fixed the size of the smaller Behemoths
  • Fixes to the crystal manufactory system and event chain
  • Fixed missing icon for the Truce End notification
  • Bodysnatchers and Genesis Symbiotes are now properly incompatible
  • Integrated Preservation and Instinctive Synchronization now share effects. Both now improve Automatic Resettlement Chance and increase Amenities from Logistic Drones
  • Aquatic for Machine and Mote-Powered Tools tooltips no longer mention such outdated concepts such as job output modifiers
  • Machine Worlds support basic generator and mining job buildings
  • Fix to Planet Automation building upgrades
  • Fixed a number of tooltips for Luminary traits
  • Fixed some cases of leader trait picks not being given correctly.
  • Evolutionary Predators now gain situation progress for Purging and keeping livestock pops. Happy hunting.
  • Agrarian idyll Housing tech now correctly tells you what it does
  • Buildings having sapient pop requirements will now list the number correctly
  • The Management tab of planets is now visible if you can see planet features. World Consecrators rejoice!
  • Behemoth now gets value properly from mutations
  • Growth Penalty for bioships is now properly applied to naval capacity

Balance

  • Reduced the biomass cost for planetary expansion for wilderness by roughly 50%
  • Xenophobic Individualist Machines start with an Alloy Foundry instead of a Medical Center
  • Void Dwellers now start with up to 3 hydroponics farms depending on food requirements
  • Further tweaks to the ethics effects of civilians:
  • Reduced the happiness for xenophobes and pop upkeep for xenophiles by 50%
  • Increased the amenities for pacifists by 10x
  • Doubled the trade for egalitarians.
  • Habitats now have a Solar Farming Bay specialisation for their Reactor districts, this gives farmer jobs, turning the district into a hybrid energy/food producer.
  • Knights OP:
  • Halved the number of knight jobs from most sources
  • Squires no longer grant the stability of soldiers
  • Reduced the Bonus Pop Growth from the Lover's Pox
  • Reduced the Stability from Memorialist job swaps
  • Updated Scientist Expertise traits
  • Assault armies now cost food instead of minerals for empires with biological ships
  • The life support system on the Crashed Slaver Ship for Broken Shackles has been discovered to be working, granting +30% habitability
  • Increased the Strategic Resource cost of Fallen Empire buildings from 100 to 300.
  • Increased the amount of Trader Jobs from the Galactic Commerce Hub and the Interstellar Commerce Nexus from 100/200 to 600/1200
  • Reduced the Dimensional Fabricator output from +5/+2 strategic resources to +4/+1
  • The Shrinkspace Depot and the Extra-Dimensional depot now grant +500/1000 minor artifact storage capacity
  • The Molecular Revitalization Institute and the Bioregeneration Institute now grant fewer jobs, from 400/600 Medical Workers to 200/300 Medical Workers.
  • The Robot Manufacturing Nexus and the Robot Quantum Production Hub now grant fewer jobs, from 200/500 Roboticists to 150/300 Roboticists.
  • The Quantum Innovation Nexus and the Transcendental Innovation Department now grant fewer jobs, from 400/400 of each researcher type to 200/400 of each researcher type. Politician jobs have been removed.
  • Curator Councilors no longer grant nigh infinite amounts of trade production
  • Synthetic Fertility pops now die off much slower

UI

  • Changes to modifiers are now mirrored in the UI immediately, even when paused
  • Re-added pop decline alert.
  • Improvements to the Build District tooltip
  • Now tells you it will Build a District if you can afford it and click on it
  • The modifier tooltip on a district will now also account for the modifiers coming from the district specialization.

Stability

  • Fixed a common OOS after hotjoining due to leader trait assignments
  • Fix common OOS related to wrong cached data about planet profit
  • Fixed crash happening because a fleet was marked to be killed when the country was destroyed in special circumstances
  • Fix to a wilderness growth related CTD
  • Fixed a circular dependency in the French localization that was causing a crash.
  • Fix crash with paragon special project
  • Fix crash when merging fleets in reinforcements system fail
  • Fix crash in economy fetching data from invalid diplomatic contact
  • Fix crash with defensive armies removing dead army
  • Prevented crash happening on special conditions that allowed holdings to be in regular zones
  • Fixed crash when orbital bombardment ruins building

Performance

  • Make creation of unnecessary jobs more sparse to reduce amount of objects.
  • Make creation of jobs more sparse to reduce amount of objects.

Modding

  • Updated species_uses_bonus_growth game rule to match can_species_procreate



Let us know your thoughts, we're staying tuned.