Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy
Stellaris
Stellaris 3.99.2 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
by Eladrin
We have another update to the Open Beta today, and are planning for another later on this week.
Stellaris 3.99.2 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
Fixes and Improvements
Added an Industrial Zone for mixed alloys and consumer goods
The focus task "Embrace a Faction" is changed to "Promote a Faction"
Added two focus tasks for MegaCorps to establish branch offices
Updated costs of special projects that have costs that scale with the number of pops
Changed every_owned_pop to every_owned_pop_group, so now looping through groups
Made ethic changes work on pop groups instead of pops
Updated robot pop checks to pop groups
Zones now have icons associated with their type.
Zones now have a larger active area to click on that is clearly visible.
Planet UI now has basic Zone tooltips
Replaced a bunch of placeholder icons with less placeholder ones.
Revamped Rise of the manifesti event chain
Created new message type for new terraforming candidate events and turned them into a notification
Lithoid resource traits no longer block cybernetic leviathan traits
Improved the Modifiers section of the colonization UI.
Replaced jobs with strata in resettlement view
Workforce modifier icons added
Modding
Moved resource upkeep and production for pops from species archetype and traits to the resource tables for archetypes and traits, instead of them being part of the pop categories
How Do I Opt Into the Beta?
Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.2 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.
The 3.99.0 and 3.99.1 Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting.
For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary.
We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of the planet UI and rework. We know it's not in a finished or releasable state, but want your feedback regardless.
Stellaris 3.99.1 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes
by Eladrin
Hello everyone!
We've updated the Open Beta to 3.99.1, with the following changes:
Stellaris 3.99.1 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta update
Fixes and Improvements
Fallen Empires are blocked from using the Existential Expulsion casus belli
Negative effects added to the Magnetic Disruption planet modifier
Assembling robots will no longer cause the slow and inevitable decline of your growing pops
Changed auto pick leader traits setting to default to off
Made Species Rights button different for pre-sapients
Pops and Workforce
Fixed traders not being created from trade zones
Adjusted amenities and housing from luxury housing
Pops now have appropriate Diplomatic Weight
Civilians now grant the benefits associated with culture workers
Planetary View
Tabs in the Planet view now have correct hotkeys
Urban Zones now show their titles
Moved the build district level button from District Details view into the Planet Summary screen
The Build Queue tooltip no longer says "Previous"
Displaying the District type names in the Planet Summary screen
Moved job production changes to buildings for better tooltips
The Colony View tabs now have ordered ZXCVB keyboard shortcuts
Empire Focus
Rescaled focus reward requirements to be easier to reach the final tier
Fixed the DLC requirements for focus tasks "Observe a Pre-FTL" and "Build a Mega Shipyard"
Fixed the requirements tooltip for the Beastmasters focus task "Have 10 Space Amoeba Mothers"
Fixed the completion check in the Conquest focus task "Have 3 Subjects"
Drawing leader level focus tasks now require the previous task to be completed
Cultists
The chance to encounter the Cultist event chain now depends on your ethics
The Cultist event chain now fires after a year instead of after a month
Cultists are now neutral until you choose to attack them
You can now forgive the Cultists and have them join you
Modding
The trigger num_pops is replaced by pop_amount since there are now 100 times more pops
How Do I Opt Into the Beta?
Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.1 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.
The 3.99.0 Open Beta branch will also remain available.
For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary. So far we're extremely happy with the response and your participation has already found several major issues, some of which we're addressing during this release. We expect to update the Open Beta again early-to-mid next week.
Stellaris Dev Diary #374 - Announcing the 3.99.0 "Phoenix" Open Beta
by Eladrin
Surprise! An early Stellaris Dev Diary!
Last week I mentioned that on Friday we’d evaluate the current build, and I’d see if I could provide a timeline for the Open Beta. Things have been progressing well, so we’ve decided to put a very early version of some of the 4.0 changes to test a few aspects of the new systems.
The Stellaris 4.0 update changes a lot of things - you can find a lot of the details in the dev diaries of the last two months. This first build of the 3.99 Open Beta only contains a focused subset of the changes, and many are still in a work-in-progress prototype state. It is not polished, or even done yet.
The 3.11 Technology Open Beta very quickly found some performance issues with the Breakthrough Technologies that we were experimenting with, and as the pop systems have advanced far enough to be mostly functional, I want to get some broader gameplay done on that system in particular, even if the rest of the systems have not yet reached a fully playable state. A week of Open Beta gets more testing done than we can do internally over months, even if this isn’t at a level that I would historically have been comfortable releasing to the public. (Just so you know what you’re opting into!)
We also have a feedback survey available that focuses primarily on the Empire Timeline and Focus systems. (Later weeks will have new surveys on different topics.)
So What’s in the Build?
Last week’s dev diary provides a fairly accurate update about the current state of the build.
Precursor Selection, the Databank, and Species Modification are all functional.
The general game pacing adjustments, changes to galaxy generation, and notification changes are all in. The leader pacing changes are in, but we’re reviewing how leaders interact with the new economy before evaluating what changes to make to the traits themselves.
Empire Timeline and Focuses are in a functional, borderline releasable, state. We have added a number of Milestones that will appear on the Timeline, though there’s some polish we’re planning to do before release. Most of the basic Focus Tasks that we want are in, along with some of the Progression rewards for completing them.
The Trade and Logistic described in Dev Diary #369 are largely in, but some of the branch office changes and functionality are still on the to-do list.
Basic implementation of Pop Groups and the new Job system are in. This includes simultaneous Pop Growth and Auto-Migration, a partial colonization UI, and a partial update to the Planet UI itself. The major economic changes relating to Districts, Zones, and Buildings are only partially in, but I wanted to get the pop changes under some pressure as soon as possible.
We also renamed “Bonus Workforce” to “Job Efficiency”.
Any Known Issues or Things You Want to Tell Us?
The Ship Designer, Hard Reset origin, and Mammalian portraits are all in separate development branches, and will not be appearing during the Open Beta.
This build of the Open Beta build will not support Gestalts, unusual planets like Habitats or Ringworlds, or especially unusual civics, origins, or playstyles. Many Ascensions may be in a strange or dysfunctional state. Since many of the more interesting civics and origins aren’t supported yet, we strongly recommend playing the United Nations of Earth or the Commonwealth of Man, or custom empires similar in complexity. Expect things like Virtuality or Clone Army to be fairly broken right now.
You will likely start with an Amenities shortage at the start of the game. We haven’t decided whether this models an overpopulated homeworld nicely or if we consider it a bug. (It will be less dire once more of the buildings are available.)
Significant parts of the planet UI are still in development, including most “flavor” elements.
If you manually build a colony ship, it will not appear in the colonization UI. (They can still be used to colonize a planet by pressing the Colonize fleet order.)
Since the Zones UI is still in progress, you cannot get access to the menu to replace them right now. You’re stuck with your Earth Space Age Industry for this build.
The Early Space Age zone doesn’t currently have any other buildings you can put into it, so being stuck with it is kind of unfun.
We have not yet updated the Diplomacy traditions to reflect that Form Federation is now a technology.
Clerks haven’t been annihilated yet, and many non-”core” jobs have not been fully converted into the new system. Traditions and other things that modify Clerks have not yet been updated.
Civilians are currently an uncapped job rather than being associated with City District development. Living standards have not yet been updated to provide bonuses to Civilians rather than Unemployed Pops.
Planetary Logistic Upkeep currently pays you Trade if you have surpluses. While it takes money to make money, that’s not exactly what we were going for.
The UI element on the Management tab that is intended to show the size change of each pop group since last month is always “- 0”
Defensive Armies don’t spawn, so every planet will immediately surrender when bombarded. (Ground combat fixed?)
Some strings may not be present, and some icons are placeholder purple. Many.
The Unemployment entry in the planet UI is a little overenthusiastic. Yes, pops grow into their parents’ strata and get upset if they can’t get a job worthy of their upbringing right away, but it shouldn’t be a pressing matter until their numbers get over 100.
The AI isn’t great at picking zones yet. It nods sagely at the first thing it finds that it can afford and decides it’s an offer it can’t refuse.
The base “colony” designation has not yet been removed. Our intention is for the Colonist jobs provided by the Reassembled Ship Shelter to provide the benefits of the old colony designation. (And will thus expire when you upgrade your planetary capital rather than when you reach a certain number of Pops.)
We can’t guarantee multiplayer stability on this build, but we have identified an immediate economic Out of Sync issue that occurs when Windows and non-Windows users are playing together.
Here are the release notes for this build:
Stellaris 3.99.0 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta Release Notes
Features
Pops and Pop Groups
One of the biggest changes in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, and one of the primary focuses of this Open Beta, is the new Pop system. Rather than being individuals, Pops are now grouped based on Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction, mostly for calculation purposes. As part of this change, Pop numbers have been increased by a factor of 100, allowing more granular manipulation of Pops by various systems.
All Pop Groups on a planet have simultaneous growth every month following the existing Logistic Growth formulas.
Underrepresented pops are no longer given population growth bonuses.
Fractional growth is not retained from month to month - if a Pop Group would have fractional growth, it has a chance to gain 1 pop that month based on that fraction.
All migration is now handled through the auto-migration system rather than push and pull that previously affected pop growth.
As more granular and simultaneous pop growth is now possible, the minimum growth for small colonies has been removed. Early colonization will be extremely reliant on migration from the empire capital.
Open Beta Note: Xenocompatibility no longer produces hybrid pops, but has not yet been updated to pool all planetary species into a single group for logistic growth purposes. When this is complete, we are likely to remove the Xenocompatibility galaxy setup toggle.
A Civilian stratum has been added to represent the masses that do not generally contribute to the empire’s military economy.
Open Beta Note: Civilians are intended to replace Clerks, which will be removed in a future Open Beta update.
Empires now begin with 2000 more pops, most of whom will be Civilians.
The other major economic change in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update is a revamp to how jobs work.
Rather than Districts and Buildings being especially similar, we are shifting to a model where:
Planets produce and consume resources through Jobs.
Districts provide Jobs based on their development. (Mining District: Add 200 Housing and 200 Miner jobs per development level.)
Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by Districts. (Foundry Zone: Replace 200 Civilian jobs and 200 Housing with 100 Metallurgists per development level.)
Open Beta Note: Currently the Zones are simpler, and will just provide the jobs. It is our intention for most Zones to convert rather than add.
Buildings are planet-unique and change what the Jobs produce. (Mote Harvesters: Technicians now also produce Volatile Motes.)
Pops produce Workforce that fills up Jobs.
Open Beta Note: The Planet UI is still very much a work in progress.
The Situation Log now contains a tab for the Empire Timeline, which keeps track of important milestones of your playthrough.
The Timeline tab also contains a set of Empire Focus Tasks, which are intended to assist players with forming short and medium terms that align with their empire’s nature, while reducing the randomness of the tech tree.
Empires can choose between Conquest, Exploration, and Development as their primary Empire Focuses. You will still gain Tasks from other categories, but they will generally be weighted towards your choice. Some Tasks are basic “Core” Tasks, and will provide progress along all three tracks.
Completing Tasks provides progress towards Guaranteed Technology unlocks that are considered critical for that playstyle. You still need to research the technologies, they only provide the research option when you reach progress milestones. If you already have the technology unlocked or as a permanent research option, there is no alternate reward.
Because Task completion is retroactive and there are no alternate rewards, there should be no benefit in waiting to complete any that you have.
Should you end up with a Task that you find uncompletable or that you do not wish to complete, you can discard it and gain a new Task for a small cost in Unity.
It is our intention that empires that behave consistent with their Empire Focus should naturally complete the Tasks of that category.
Ships now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on whether they are docked (free), friendly space (reduced), neutral space (normal), or hostile space (expensive).
Larger ships tend to have higher upkeep.
The multipliers based on location are set in defines.
Juggernauts do not have logistical upkeep, and reduce the logistical upkeep costs for ships in their system by 75%.
Resources blocks can now include a "logistics" block, which is currently only used by ships.
Planets now have logistical upkeep paid by Trade based on their local resource deficits. This represents the additional costs of diverting freighters to transport materials between planets.
Local deficit costs vary based largely on the base market value of the resources in question.
Trade Policies can set how much of your Net trade after logistics upkeep is converted into other resources.
Added galaxy setup sliders for Fleet Upkeep Logistics Costs and Planetary Deficit Logistics Costs.
The main help button now displays the Databank window where you can explore brief articles on many in-game concepts, reducing the need to navigate to external information sources.
Improvement
Adjective leader trait names reverted, for example Inquisitor to Inquisitive
Colonization flow has been improved.
You can now pre-select a colony designation and turn on planet automation before colonizing a planet, which will apply when the planet has finished colonizing.
Colonization now completes when 100 colonists have grown or migrated to the new planet.
Significant improvements have been made to the Species UI.
One template per species can be set as the default template for that species, and other subspecies can be set to integrate over time into that default template.
Open Beta Note: Current rate of pop integration is likely to change to be slower as well as monthly.
The trait selection UI when creating a new template has been improved.
The special project window pops up and can be started immediately after creating a new template if desired. It is no longer absolutely necessary as you can use integration to slowly convert your existing pops.
The Habitable Worlds slider in game setup now has a 'Rare' setting. There will still be a handful of habitable worlds in the galaxy, mostly from special events and guaranteed habitable worlds. Normalized initializer spawn odds to use a handful of scripted variables.
Added galaxy precursor selection to game setup.
Leader Adjustments:
As part of our game pacing and interruption reduction pass, leaders now gain trait selection moments on even levels rather than every level.
Leader positions now have a significantly greater effect on what traits will appear when they level up and gain a new skill.
Increased the base number of leader traits to pick from on level up by 1. This is intended to reduce the chance of getting exclusively poor trait options without devaluing other sources of leader trait picks too much.
Added an "Auto Select Leader Traits by Default" option to game settings, which defaults to Off. On game start or if you switch to an empire, it will toggle the setting on the Leaders tab to your selection. In Coop empires, this override only applies when the primary player of the country joins it. Changing the setting mid-game will not have any effect unless you switch countries.
Significant improvements have been made to Message and Notification settings, providing you much more control over how you receive them.
Updated the default message settings
Revised strategic resource messages and added toast notifications
Changed trader events into notifications with unique icons. Added sound effect.
Anomaly discoveries now appear in a toast rather than popping up in the center of the screen.
Patron Newsletter event was changed into a notification
The Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
Order Restored event is now a notification
Governing Ethic Shift event has been turned into a toast
Faction Formed Events now appear as toasts following the first event
Added additional event options to Corrupt Administration event and turned it into a notification
The Toxic Terraforming Candidate Discovered Event is now a notification
Changed Inter-Dimensional trade increases event into a notification
Added concept tooltips to the left Navigation Bar
Added the Celestial Orrery system
Transport ships can now use cloaking
The Ruler Stratum has been renamed the Elite Stratum, to better differentiate them from the actual Empire Ruler
The system fleet icon tooltip now shows the total of the fleets' military power listed by that icon, at the top.
Added unique event options and localization for new life discovered events
Reduced spammy First Contact events
First Colony event - Added unique event options and rewards for Ethics
Adjusted mass extinction event chain localization and picture
The Betrayal event has been revamped to include multiple options
Renamed government tab to overview in outliner
Reduced the frequency of the Rise of the Manifesti event chain
Added missing reward to fanatic materialist for Comet Sighted event
Improved readability for event Covenant Formed
Changed Storm Spotted alert sound to something less intrusive
The low habitability popup now clearly highlights the negative effects
Added the two new Society technologies Federation Code and Existential Campaigns
Ironman mode is no longer required to earn most Stellaris achievements. An unmodified game checksum remains a requirement, and the use of any debug commands blocks them.
The "Victorious" achievement has been changed to "Win the game through any victory condition in Ironman mode."
Open Beta Note: Pop related achievements have not yet been updated.
Several changes to the starbase UI to improve game flow and overall interaction
Reworked Starbase window to harmonize naming and tooltips
You are 4x as attractive as you were before.
Balance
FE and Cosmogenesis Escort ships now have the same evasion value of 50
Changed Curator Insight cost to empire size
The Eternal Vigilance Ascension Perk can now be acquired early if you complete the Unyielding Tradition Tree.
Adjusted Anomaly spawn rates to improve the pacing of the early game.
Added more variance to whether or not prescripted systems will or will not appear in a given game. (They won't all appear in every single game anymore.)
Bugfix
Fixed the issue of fleets failing to retreat from lost combat if the last ship failed to disengage.
Human Pre-FTL societies now obey the Pre-FTL Civilizations game settings slider.
Fixed a script error that was causing far more habitable planets to spawn in the galaxy than expected. Feel free to increase the Habitable Worlds slider if you prefer the old behavior.
Fixed inconsistent capitalisation causing issues with pre-ftl pop generation
Cleaned up the end-game crisis triggers. The Unbidden will no longer be the only ones to show up early to the party.
Fix triggers to properly give Fissile Cores, the unique mutation for crystalline entities
Treasure Hunters AIs now correctly go through the dialog events
Fix Black Needle country spawning starbases
Fixed too many AI empires being generated in coop games.
Fixed the tooltip for obtaining the Mirror of Knowledge from the Infinity Machine not mentioning the 200 influence it also gives you
Amenities icon fixed for Drone Storage and Hive Warren
checks if planet owner is primitive before applying sector or system bonuses
Set the nanotech ascension path interdictors to use different ship models from the swarmers
Spitter Gun mutations have armor penetration
Missiles mutations have numerals corresponding to tier in icons
Nanite Infused Barb mutation requires nanites to build
Ancient Driller Beasts mutations uses 88 as its M size cost
Neutron Throwers mutation damage buff
Blocked anomalies from spawning on the neutron star for Slingshot to the Stars' quantum catapult
Handled dyson sphere flags on dismantling swarm while upgrading
Fixed a broken tooltip inside of the "Extended Shifts" edict.
Clone Soldier Ascendants can now cyberize
Completing Inhibit Self-Deterministic AIs removes it from the situation log
Fix the possibility to build multiple Grand Archives at the same time
Only display relevant modifiers for Space Fauna ships in tooltips
Reanimated space fauna ships cannot upgrade no matter what
Black Needle fleet now correctly spawns to defend their base from bombardment
Destroy Gravity Snare when there's no valid target anymore
Broken Shackles check added for relevant Galcom events
Strip Mine Decision is no longer available on artificial planets
Inspired Rhetoric will no longer display a placeholder icon
Fixed situations start value being added multiple times.
Special system initializers now respect the habitable worlds slider in game setup (to a degree).
Planetary part of ringworlds no longer take on empire color
First Contact was changed into a toast and once again shows the correct localization
Added missing pre sapient loc string
The dismantle button has regained its missing loc string
Resolved scope error caused by toast target scope being set to root
Advanced start empires can no longer have mining stations over resources they do not have tech for
AI
Fixed Prethoryn Scourge incorrectly calculating target priority for non-edible pops.
UI/UX
Added an Assign Leader button to the leaders screen that lists available positions.
Fixed it not being possible to build starbases in systems with non-central stars from the galaxy view (when a construction ship is selected).
Added a message setting button in event popup windows.
Hid details that aren't relevant for all species in the galaxy when the Galaxy tab is selected in the Species view.
Updated the message settings screen to give more space for the message list.
Changed auto-unpause on the message settings screen from a spinner to a checkbox.
Adjusted centering of text and icons in toast windows. If a toast with custom description has no icon associated with the custom description, the description will now fill the entire lower section of the toast.
Localization
Add tooltip to Cutholoid Hunter modifier
Add tooltip to Voidworm Hunter modifier
Turn reanimated cutholoids and voidworms ship size name consistent with other reanimated Space Fauna
Modding
Open Beta Note: We’re still working on Zones and Buildings, and will likely change how we do some of this to be a bit friendlier. Don’t update your mods based on what you see in this build.
Add `resettle_pop_group` effect that allows to resettle a specified portion of a pop group to a target planet
Add first iteration of `create_pop_group` effect
Add kill_pop_group effect that takes a pop group and an amount or percentage and instantly kills them
Add `transfer_pop_amount` effect that transfers pops from a pop group to another
Removed unused can_resettle_planet game rule and renamed can_resettle_planet_no_owner_check to can_resettle_planet.
Removed can_colonize_with_pop game rule and moved its checks to can_colonize_with_species.
Added the script effect "copy_traditions_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { tradition1 tradition 2 } }" that copies tradition from a target country into the scoped country
Added "add_ascension_perk" and "remove_ascension_perk" effects, scope must be a country, adds or removed the specified perk syntax: add/remove_ascension_perk = perk_key
Added "copy_ascension_perks_from" effect: Copies the Ascension Perks of the target country into the scoped country. They are added to the existing perks, and the potential/possible triggers are respected. The perks listed in the exceptions list are not copied. copy_ascension_perks_from = { target = FROM exceptions = { perk1 perk2 } }
Added "remove_tradition" effect. Remove the target tradition from the scoped Country. remove_tradition = tradition_key
Added effect "remove_tradition_tree" Remove the target tradition tree from the scoped Country. remove_tradition_tree = tradition_category_key
Added spawn_design to static galaxy system data, which forces a specific design to spawn in the system.
Added gamesetup_settings script for configuring the settings list in game setup.
There is now an event_message_type in events that lets you override the default message type EVENT_MESSAGE_TYPE. This can e.g. provide separate message settings.
Scripted loc can now be used in concept tooltips and the top bar tooltips.
New on_action on_favor_gained that gets triggered when a country receives a favor.
Added the used_defense_platform_capacity_percent trigger, letting you check how much of a starbases defensive platform capacity is used.
Message notification background is now separated from the message type icon.
New on_action on_research_option_added that gets triggered every time a new permanent research option is acquired.
The actual script file and line are now printed when there are errors logged in scripted triggers and scripted effects, in addition to the previously available information.
kill_pop has been replaced with kill_pop_group. For ease of use kill_single_pop and kill_all_pop scripted effects have been made.
Replaced resettle_pop with resettle_pop_group.
Added "playme" console command as shorthand for human_ai and ai_ignore_was_human.
Okay, How Do I Opt Into the Beta?
If you’re ready for a confusing, possibly frustrating, and unfinished experience, and you’re on Steam, you can opt into the Open Beta.
Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.0 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.
What’s Next?
We expect that the next Open Beta update, 3.99.1, will have Civilians in a more complete state, and more of the UI and AI should be in place. Buildings, Zones, and Jobs should also have more progress too.
Our next Dev Diary will be on Thursday, March 20th, but I hope to have an update to the Open Beta before the weekend.
Stellaris Dev Diary #373 - 4.0 Development Progress Update
by Eladrin
Hello everyone!
We’re still hard at work getting the features we’ve been describing into the game, but this week we’re giving you a bit of a progress update, and I’ll be giving my thoughts on what shape they’ll be in when we begin the Open Beta. As with everything over the past couple of months, all of this is still subject to change.
We’ve successfully gotten past the critical milestone of “the game is no longer completely broken”, and things are starting to come together very nicely.
DD #367: Precursor Selection, Databank, Species Modification, and Ship Designer
The first three are fully functional and will be in the Open Beta.
The Databank still has some placeholder graphics on some buttons, and we’re planning on adding more entries, but it’s good enough for the Open Beta.
The work for the Ship Designer changes was done in the Q2 DLC branch to support that release, and while it is functional it will not be in the Open Beta (but will be in the final release).
DD #368: Pacing Adjustments, Galaxy Generation, Leader Traits, Events/Messages/Notifications, Empire Focuses and the Timeline, Hard Reset, and Achievements
Wow, we covered a lot in that dev diary.
All of these are functional, but like the Ship Designer, Hard Reset is in a different branch and will not be present in the Open Beta (but will be in the final release).
The Timeline shows a number of important milestones, and is generally functional. There’s still some polish to be done here, but I feel like it’s in a good enough state for the Open Beta.
Many of the basic Focus Tasks are in too, along with some of the progression rewards for completing them. We’ve added a couple of new Technologies to use as awards, such as Existential Campaigns, a tier 5 Society Tech.
Still to-do are Tasks for nonstandard gamestyles, and we haven’t moved things like Form Federation out of the Diplomatic Traditions yet.
Currently almost all of the Focuses relate to the base game only, but it’s good enough for now. We will have more in the actual 4.0 release.
Achievements no longer require Ironman, but the use of any debug commands disables them for that run. We haven’t updated them to the new systems yet though, so getting things like 100 pops on a planet is trivially easy.
Well that was easy.
DD #369: Trade and Logistics, Mammalian Portraits
Most, but not all, of the features described in dev diary #369 are in a functional state. Trade is a normal resource that is shown in the top bar. There’s Logistical upkeep on ships and for local planetary deficits, and it has replaced energy as the market resource.
We have not yet completed the entire trade economy for Gestalts, but they will have some baseline generation to handle this from their Maintenance Drones for the Open Beta.
Our mammalian friends are done, but like Hard Reset, are in their own development branch and will not be present in the Open Beta.
DD #370: Pop Groups and Workforce, Colonization, and Civilians
This is the core of what we’re interested in testing during the Open Beta.
Pops have been converted to using the new Pop Group system, and most aspects of Workforce are functional. We’re still going through the various jobs and updating them, and some of the weirder stuff in Stellaris (like, for example, Permanent Unemployment) hasn’t been worked on yet. Broken Shackles is hilariously broken right now. (It’s in the name, after all.)
Multispecies pop growth is working, but we haven’t made Xenocompatibility pool different species together yet.
Simultaneous pop growth!
Your homeworld starts with an extra 2000 pops, most of whom start as Civilians. This number is subject to change based on our internal playtesting and the Open Beta.
This is the other big part we’re still working on. The backend for the new mechanics is mostly complete, but we’re still doing the design side implementation of the new jobs, zones, and buildings.
The actual surface UI is still very much a work in progress - it’s getting to a functional state, but isn’t near the polish level of the designs you saw in the dev diary. It’s likely to be part of the way there (but not complete) at the start of the Open Beta.
Special planet types like Habitats and Ecumenopoli are unlikely to be fully implemented for at least the first part of the Open Beta. We have completed tying Habitat maximum development directly to the sizes of the deposits in the system, but haven’t had a chance to recreate their districts or zones using the new systems yet.
Performance
In a couple of threads, I mentioned that we’re not yet taking full advantage of some of the new model's performance benefits. Many things are still being calculated daily rather than monthly and are still largely single-threaded. We plan to keep it that way for the first couple of patches of the Open Beta because it will make it significantly easier for us to spot and fix any major issues that crop up.
As a reminder, the 3.11 Technology Open Beta found an issue like that with the Breakthrough Technologies, and finding these sorts of fundamental problems is my primary desire for the Open Beta. The Stellaris community is pretty exceptional at providing general feedback with the information provided by dev diaries, but a week of Open Beta testing will hammer the systems harder than we could do with months of internal testing.
So WHEN is it? What’s Next?
I can’t quite tell you that right now. This Friday, we’ll be evaluating the status of our current build, and I’ll try to provide a possible timeline for sometime next week.
Until then, it’s back to the code mines for us! See you next week!
Stellaris Dev Diary #372 - Modding: Pop Groups and Jobs
by Eladrin
Hi everyone!
This week, Gruntsatwork will discuss the technical details of pop group scripting. This topic is likely to be of most interest to the modding community.
The systems we’re implementing now are just scratching the surface of where we want to go with them - we’re looking forward to some of the things we’ll be able to do with these tools over the next few years as well as seeing what you do with them.
As with all of these dev diaries, some of this is still subject to change during implementation and during the beta.
Pop Groups and Jobs
Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here! Let us talk about some of the script changes that are coming with 4.0 when it comes to pops and jobs…
As Eladrin already mentioned in Dev Diary 370, we are changing the way we look at Pops by grouping them together into Pop Groups. These groups are defined by their species, traits, ethics, and factions but NOT their jobs. It is entirely possible and likely for a pop group to have pops working different jobs.
The goal is that for most purposes in the game, you will reference pop groups instead of pops, which should hopefully save us from iterating through every single pop in our empire whenever a modifier needs to be re-calculated.
This allows us to tone down or remove some of the most performance-intensive actions we used before and replace them with far more performance-friendly variations instead.
For example, that means that both “random_owned_pop” or “any_owned_pop” have been relegated to the dark corners of history and replaced with “random_owned_pop_group” and “any_owned_pop_group”.
The same holds true for many of the effects used on those pops, like create_pop or kill_pop, or move_pop. Going forward, we will now create, move and kill pop groups, either in their entirety or through percentages. And for the eagle-eyed among you, YES, that means you no longer have to loop through singular pops to do unspeakable things to them, you can nicely target their pop group and let it do the math for you.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of our programmers, who have given us some new functionality for scripted triggers like comparators, other old tools, like num_pops, will see a resurgence as a scripted trigger. We expect the modding folks to find a lot of use in that, even as we slightly dread what you will come up with.
As also mentioned by Eladrin, this means we no longer have a constant contact between pops and their job.
Instead, there is a single moment of assignment when the pop group briefly knows which job it is supplying and with how much workforce. From then on, the job only knows that it has been supplied with workforce and thus must produce the associated resource. As long as the assignment stands, we have no need to check on the pop again.
This brings us to one of our biggest changes: removing all production modifiers on species traits and replacing them with bonus workforce. Simply put, because the workforce assigned to a job does not know which species it came from during most checks, production bonuses from species (modifiers like +10% Research from Jobs from the Psionic trait) cannot be applied. Instead, species traits now provide modifiers like “+10% Bonus Workforce for Researcher Jobs”, which means 100 Psionic Pops working 100 Physicist jobs will have the job upkeep and output of 110 Physicist jobs. In other words, we only pay upkeep on 100 Pops, but we get the output of 110 Researchers! This also has the side effect of the modifiers for job output from species traits are now multiplicative with other modifiers.
As an example, in 3.14 if we had 1 Psionic (+10% Research from Jobs) Pop working a Researcher job in an empire with the Meritocracy civic (+10% Specialist Job Output) on a Relic world with a Central Spire (+15% Research from Jobs), the total output would be 3 × (1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.15) = 3 × 1.35 = 4.05 of each type of research.
In 4.0 if we have 100 Psionic (+10% Bonus Workforce for Researcher Jobs) Pops working 100 Physics jobs in an empire with the Meritocracy civic (+10% Specialist Job Output) on a Relic world with a Central Spire (+15% Research from Jobs), the total output would be 3 × (1 + 0.1) × (1 + 0.1 + 0.15) = 3 × 1.1 × 1.25 = 4.125 physics research.
This brings us beautiful new script entries like this one from the Psionic trait: It doesn’t have to be like this. But it can be. Grunts made his choice. - E This is perfectly serviceable - G I have hopes to refactor this - AS
As a side note, some checks can still query a pop’s job, but only indirectly, by scoping to a job and determining which pop group is filling it. This means we can still ensure functionality for Death Cults and similar targeted kill_pop effects.
In contrast, production bonuses on the planet or the empire are still available since they simply affect everyone.
So for species traits, we encourage the use of these new modifiers
pop_job_bonus_workforce_mult To increase the bonus workforce a pop generates for a given job.
pop_job_workforce_mult To increase the workforce a pop generates for a given job, this is not bonus workforce.
job_max_workforce_mult To increase the maximum workforce a Job can accept
As a reminder, a job's workforce will fill to its maximum allowed but not beyond that. If a pop generates more workforce than usual, fewer pops will be required to fill the job to max, but it will not produce more than its maximum. If a pop generates a bonus workforce, it can go beyond the job's maximum and scale its production up.
In addition, we have also split quite a few of our economic categories that depended on triggered checks of species traits. This also includes the use of triggers to fake an inheritance of economic classes, which we have removed in many cases and only left in the ones we deemed the most reliant on them.
For inheritance, we recommend the normal parent-child structure of economic categories OR, to use static_modifiers to grant the modifiers of any combination of economic_categories.
Most, if not all, of these changes were made to improve performance: reducing calls, loops, and modifier cascades that would otherwise trigger recalculations across every planet and pop in your empire, just in case a deficit check was needed at that moment.
Looking ahead, we see great potential in workforce mechanics, both for us and the modding community. We've hinted at automation – workforce decoupled from pops – and some of you may have already considered new applications for Virtuality. Who knows what other, more extreme variations in the type and number of pops empires require might now be possible?
Simply put, we now have the workforce to power Stellaris for years to come. Pun very much intended.
What’s Next?
Our planned livestream is going to be delayed a bit, and will likely end up being alongside the Open Beta. Right now our primary focus is on implementation.
Next week we’ll have some more updates on how things have been going.
Stellaris Dev Diary #371 - 4.0 Changes: Part 5
by Eladrin
Hi everyone!
This week we’re looking more at the economic changes of the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, and how we’re going to update the Planet UI to work with them.
As this is all still in development, things are still subject to change, and I’m going to be using a lot of the UX Design Mockups in this dev diary. The final versions will not match these work-in-progress designs precisely. The Open Beta will definitely not be at these polish levels. Also be aware that numbers on these mockups are all placeholders meant to help the rest of the team get the layout right, so things like the Pop Counts or Production numbers aren’t accurate.
Planets - Districts - Zones - Buildings - Jobs
As mentioned last week, one of the fundamental changes we’re making to the economy behind the scenes is that planets are now the source of production rather than the pops themselves. This is a generally subtle change from your perspective as a player, but this opened up an opportunity to revamp exactly how planets are structured, and to formalize some of the job hierarchy. A few of you have already guessed some of the things I’m going to share with you.
We’re introducing a new planetary feature: Zones. By specializing Districts, Zones function similarly to how the Forge World, Factory World, and Industrial World designations previously modified the jobs provided by Industrial Districts – only now as a more structured, intuitive, and flexible mechanic.
The 4.0 Planet Hierarchy is:
Planets produce and consume resources.
Districts provide a base number of Jobs for each level of development.
Zones manipulate what Jobs are provided by their District.
Buildings typically modify the production of Jobs themselves, though may also provide static numbers of Jobs.
Jobs are filled by Workforce, and make the planet produce a single resource by default (unless they have been modified).
Standard planets have a City District that contains your urban development, and remains capped by planet size as it is in 3.14. The City District has four Zones - one will always be locked to a Governmental Zone and contains your Capital Building, while the other three will be selectable. Normal planets also have Mining, Agricultural, and Energy Districts which each have one Zone, and - like 3.14 - are gated by planetary features. Industrial Districts have been removed, as their function has been replaced by Zones.
Upgrading Districts is now clearly shown as a button on the Planet UI - this should reduce the number of “it took me X months to realize you can build districts” posts. As part of the increase in differentiation between Districts and Buildings, we’ve changed some of the terminology slightly - instead of building a dozen Districts across a planet, you will upgrade their development level. Functionally this remains the same.
Zones are our new addition to the Planet Hierarchy. Zones let you change the nature of their District. By default, the City District will provide Housing and increase the maximum number of Civilians that your planet can support. (Based on design discussions over the past week, we’re leaning towards your Empire Capital having a bonus increasing this number significantly, which has the nice secondary effect of making the conquest of Homeworlds in the early game carry the societal challenge of suddenly creating many angry Dissidents that will be unable to promote back to Civilians as this bonus is lost.) If you build a Foundry Zone, the City District will replace some of their Civilian capacity and housing with Metallurgist jobs for each level of development. If you then build a Factory Zone, the City District will provide both Metallurgist and Artisan jobs, but with further reductions to their Citizen capacity.
While you can build multiple Zones of the same type (in your City District, for example), the first Zone of each type built on a planet gains three slots for Buildings. (Duplicate Zones do not grant additional Building slots.) Buildings typically modify the production of their associated Job, and most are now Planet Unique. The majority of Buildings are restricted to the specific relevant Zones that they can be built in, but some can still be built anywhere. The Government Zone and Urban Zone can, however, accept most Urban buildings. The build list will be filtered appropriately.
The majority of Jobs will now have a single output by default, so Researchers are being broken apart into Physicists, Biologists, and Engineers.
Origins and Civics that previously replaced Jobs will now typically instead have a Building that modifies the associated Job. A benefit of this is that it should now be able to stack better with other similar Civics - we hope to be able to reduce restrictions so perhaps you’ll be able to sacrifice willing Pops by flinging them into a black hole for money.
The Planetary Surface
Your homeworld is a bit of a special case in Stellaris - it’s not a brand new colony, but it’s also not very specialized. It needs to provide a little bit of everything, but could really use some cleanup after all those years of development (becoming an Early Space Age civilization is a dirty job.)
Here’s the work-in-progress UX mockup of what Earth may look like at the start of the game:
The unspecialized mess of being an Early Space Age civilization gives us a relatively unspecialized zone that provides us with the basic resources necessary at the start of the game. We’ll eventually want to replace that Zone with a more specialized one.
As we head to the stars, we’ll naturally want to colonize our Guaranteed Habitable Worlds. The new Colonization UI will let us immediately set the desired planetary designation for our brand new colony.
Don’t worry, you’ll be able to select something other than Factory World...
Here’s what our new colony could look like once the colonization process finishes:
...But why did you choose Mining World for a planet with Poor Quality Minerals?
The Reassembled Ship Shelter provides Colonist jobs that will provide the Amenities and Stability previously granted by the Colony designation. As shown, the technologies required to expand on an alien world are not necessarily the same as those you need back on your home planet.
Our UX designer has created these explanations of the new UI:
And here’s what our two planets might look like after some time has passed.
Special Cases
Ever since MegaCorp, paving the entire world has always been a grand ambition of Empires.
We’re currently thinking that an Ecumenopolis should act like the megacity it is. The Ecumenopolis will have multiple Urban Districts - one large main one and three more smaller Arcologies.
Wait, this means you can make a Fortress Ecumenopolis…
Although the gameplay of upgrading a Habitat Complex by building orbitals throughout a system made Habitats more interesting, having to hunt down that last moon to place the orbital proved incredibly annoying.
For 4.0, we’re removing this pain point. Upgrading Districts on a Habitat will spawn Orbitals throughout the system as their Development Level increases. Some of the district capacity will be available immediately upon colonizing the Habitat Central Complex, with the remainder gated by upgrading the Capital Building. We’re also considering having the district capacity for Habitats more closely linked to the deposits available in the system instead of the current behavior where each mineral deposit grants a static amount of capacity.
We expect to see some unique or former districts for habitats be reimagined or return as Zones, such as the Order’s Demesne for KotTG or Sanctuary Districts for Rogue Servitors.
Goodbye, hunting for where that last minor orbital is hiding!
Next Week
Next week, Gruntsatwork will go into some of the scripting details of Jobs and Pop Groups. We should also have some more information about the upcoming 4.0 livestream.
See you then!
Stellaris Dev Diary #370 - 4.0 Changes Part 4
by Eladrin
Hello everyone!
This week we’re going to look at the upcoming changes to Pops in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update.
Last week I said we might also look at the Planet UI, but I’m going to save that until next week since there’s quite a bit to cover here (especially if you’re into the technical details), and I’d rather not split the feedback.
Pop Groups and Workforce
As mentioned in Dev Diary 366, the Pop and Jobs system introduced in Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ has always had significant performance implications in the late game, and we’ve been working on incremental improvements ever since. In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, Pops will be grouped into Pop Groups based on species, strata, ethics, and faction, and these Pop Groups will produce Workforce that is used to fill (or partially fill) Jobs. As part of this change, we’re changing the overall scale of Pops - most things that previously affected or manipulated 1 Pop would now affect or manipulate groups of 100. The new systems can manipulate any number of Pops within a Pop Group just as easily as manipulating one, and I’ll go into some of the benefits of the finer resolution below.
Our primary desire with these changes is to improve late-game performance, but while working on it we took the opportunity to streamline some aspects of planetary management and improve the planet UI.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the details.
Workforce
In Stellaris, the core economic loop since 2.2 has been: Pops fill Jobs, and Jobs produce resources.
With the 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re making a subtle but important change - Pops will now generate Workforce, which is used to fill Jobs, and planets themselves will produce resources.
At a basic level, this works almost the same way. By default, every Pop generates 1 Workforce, so Jobs are still filled at the same rate. However, this shift is crucial for backend performance improvements, reducing the number of calculations the game needs to make each month.
Example: Then vs. Now Before (3.14):
Take a planet with 100 Pops working Metallurgist Jobs, where 20 of them have a +10% Production Bonus from a Species Trait.
These 100 Pops produce 612 Alloys per month.
Every Pop is individually checked - 80 produce the standard amount, while 20 get a 10% Alloy production bonus from their species trait.
Now (4.0):
Instead of tracking individual Pops, we track Workforce filling Jobs.
Jobs are now filled by 10,000 Workforce (since Pops are scaled up by 100).
8,000 Workforce comes from regular Pops, while 2,000 Workforce comes from the bonus-earning Pops.
The species bonus is now “10% bonus Workforce when working Alloy jobs” - those Pops contribute an extra 200 Workforce, making the total 10,200 Workforce. Bonus Workforce is allowed to go over the required Workforce for a job, yielding extra production.
If 100 Workforce still produces 6 Alloys, the planet still produces 612 Alloys - same output, different system.
Why This Matters: The key benefit is efficiency. Instead of iterating through and calculating production for every individual Pop, the game now only checks once per planet. This makes the system more scalable and improves performance, while still allowing for species based bonuses and modifiers.
Most existing species traits that affect Job production will be converted into Workforce bonuses or planet-based modifiers. As always, the final balancing will be refined through the Open Beta.
There are a few quirks and subtleties about how this interacts with other modifiers - bonus Workforce as a modifier is more powerful than bonus Production due to the two of them stacking multiplicatively rather than additively.
Pop groups are currently split up by Species, Strata, Ethics, and Faction. If you end up in a case where a Pop group is not completely uniform (for example, if 20% of the Pop group are recent refugees and thus happier than the rest), then the differences get averaged across the Pop group.
If none of this feels like it makes sense - it’s okay. It’s mostly a behind-the-scenes change. Jobs require Workforce to fill them, and that’s generated by Pops. We have some ideas about ways to expand upon this in the future, such as replacing part of the Workforce with automation by using a building.
Pop Growth
With more granular Pop units, we have more ability to support simultaneous growth of Pops on a planet. Each species present on a planet will grow normally, and with the smaller unit size, will grow every month.
This results in several benefits, including multi-species empires not getting their growth dominated by underrepresented species, and also lets us remove the floor on colony Pop growth. This does mean that newly settled colonies will be very reliant on migration to grow their population until they develop to the point where they can support their own Pop growth, and removes a long-running issue where spamming colonies regardless of habitability simply for the minimum flat Pop growth was optimal.
Xeno-Compatibility will pool all species on a multi-species planet together to calculate their growth rate, then split the growth proportionally across the various species.
Assembly works largely the way it did before, except that fractional Assembly will become “microPops” thanks to the finer resolution of Pops. Machine and Organic Assembly will no longer conflict with one another, as the Organic Pops will handle their own growth, while all mechanical assembly will be channeled towards the highest “score” mechanical Pop templates available.
Colonization and Civilians
Since your new colonies will be extremely reliant on migration from their homeworld until they reach a critical mass of inhabitants where they can begin to support themselves, we’re adding a new population stratum called Civilians (or Residents, for species without full citizenship). These Civilians form the generally content base of your empire, and will trickle out to the colonies, looking for better opportunities. Unemployed Pops will still exist and downgrade through the strata, with unemployed Worker stratum Pops demoting to Civilians over time. This will have an impact on stability, as Civilians are largely content and non-disruptive.
Spoiler: More Technical Details This is mostly for you modders out there to abuse, but in the new system, “Unemployed Specialist” will technically be a Job - there’ll be one for each stratum. Every Job can have a demotion target assigned to it, and a time.
In our implementation, all of the Specialist stratum Jobs will demote to Unemployed Specialist; Unemployed Specialist will demote to Unemployed Worker, and Unemployed Worker will demote to Civilian as they give up on their dreams of productivity and veg out in front of the holoscreen.
Your homeworld will start with a fairly large pool of Civilians to support your early expansion. We’re a bit worried about early conquest of homeworlds being too easy of a snowball with this increased starting Pop count, so are considering various ways of making it more challenging to take homeworlds in the early to mid game. One idea we have includes having Civilians create impromptu defensive militias to help defend their home, and possibly starting you off with a few Defensive Platforms. Another idea is for aggressively invaded Civilians to take “Resistance” Jobs that they must then “demote” out of over time. The number of Civilians converted to this new Job and how long it takes them to drop out of it would be modified depending on how their people are being treated by their new and old masters.
We welcome your ideas and suggestions.
Clerks are dead! Long live Civilians!
We’re currently still experimenting with the effects Living Standards have on Civilians (and Pops in general) - it’s likely that more of the Trade generation from Living Standards will be shifted to the Civilian stratum, and production from Unemployed Pops in the old system may also move to the Civilians. This will give them some of the functions of Clerks in the old economic model. In Gestalt empires, they are likely going to be outright named Maintenance Drones rather than “Civilians”.
We’re also renaming the Ruler stratum to “Elites”, so “Ruler” isn’t double-dipping between your Empire’s ruler at the top economic stratum.
Next Week
Next week we’ll be going through the new Planet UI, and how all of this changes things there.
Stellaris Dev Diary #369 - 4.0 Changes: Part 3
by Eladrin
Hello everyone!
Today we’re going to take a glance at the Trade and Logistics changes coming in the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, then check out some new portraits.
Trade and Logistics
Trade as a Standard Resource
The Trade system introduced in the Stellaris 2.2 ‘Le Guin’ update was raised as an especially frequent point of confusion for many players. UX issues around disconnected trade stations combined with some quirks of being a modifier based system (like ignoring habitability) made some of it unintuitive. The system had a major impact on performance as well, so while examining Stellaris for optimizations, we decided that we wanted to revamp the system.
In 4.0, Trade will become a standard advanced resource, generally produced in the same way as before, but will follow all of the standard rules around resource-producing jobs. The Trade Routes system has been removed - any produced Trade will be immediately collected like any other normal resource.
We’ve done some cleanup to the top bar while we were in there.
Logistical Upkeep
Hello, Gruntsatwork here, with Eladrin’s UI wizardry done, I shall step in to reveal some of our trade secrets to you.
The majority of your trade upkeep will come from 2 sources in the new system.
First, local planetary deficits will carry a small trade upkeep, a fraction of the missing resources value on the galactic market. This represents the logistical effort required to commandeer freighters to supply a world that is not self-sufficient and therefore requires resources to be transported in from off-world. Mind you, this will occur in addition to normal deficits, if your entire empire is not capable of supplying those needs either.
In short, your planets will either satisfy their own local needs, or require trade to offset the logistics cost.
The second major trade upkeep will come from Fleets. Any fleets currently docked at one of your starbases have no trade upkeep.
Once your fleets start to move they will gain a small Trade Upkeep, representing the logistical efforts required to support them. This small upkeep will increase if your fleets are in hostile territory – that is territory owned by another empire you are at war with, as supplying them becomes so much more dangerous and space insurance coverage is no joke.
In the future, logistical upkeep could potentially be used to counter-act Doomstacking, for example by scaling upkeep with the number of ships in a fleet, dividing by the number of fleets, fleets per system etc, we have no concrete solution yet, but welcome your thoughts.
With these new sources of trade upkeep, it is of course important to mention that we will also introduce a new trade deficit. Like Unity, this will not create a Deficit Situation but a country modifier that persists until the deficit is dealt with. Running a trade deficit will reduce advanced resource production (alloys, consumer goods, unity, and research) and all ship weapons damage.
Stockpiling Trade and Using Trade in the Market
Our intent is for Trade Policies to continue to exist going forward. Currently, we expect to have half of your net Trade income (after paying Logistical Upkeep) converted to other resources using your Trade Policy, plus any that might otherwise overflow your storage. Some of the current Trade Policies may be tweaked a bit. The rest will go into your resource stockpile as an advanced resource.
In addition, the galactic market has been adjusted so that its primary trading resource is Trade. As such, energy is now available on the market as a standard resource. The energy storage cap has been brought to the same level as minerals and food, while Trade’s storage cap has been set to 50.000 at the base level.
As we are in the middle of implementation, we are adjusting this as we receive internal feedback and will continue to do so when it is time for our open beta.
We will be keeping a close eye on the value of trade as a resource. If necessary, we’ll keep turning the dials to ensure it is an actually interesting resource to focus on.
For modders, the main market resource is set as a define and can be switched to something else.
Gestalt Empires and Trade
Rejoice, friends of bugs and bolts, for you too will be able to enjoy the benefits of trade starting with 4.0.
As part of the Phoenix update, Gestalt empires will be able to collect trade like normal empires do, from both jobs and deposits.
In contrast to normal empires, Gestalt empires will rarely do so with Traders and Clerks, instead their most basic drones, maintenance drones for example, will create trade in addition to their normal resources and modifiers. In addition, they will also have access to Trade Policies, to enrich their common wallet.
Of course, with benefits come drawbacks, and so Gestalt Empires will also deal with the logistical upkeep for local planetary deficits and Fleets that are not docked and/or within hostile territory. The Galactic Market will of course also accept gestalt trade as its main resource.
In the future, we are also considering Megacorp Gestalt Empires, for your corporate drone needs, but whether we will have time to do that for 4.0 or later remains to be seen.
Corporate Branch Office Updates
For Branch Offices, we have a plethora of improvements ready for your enjoyment, courtesy of our ever industrious Mr.Cosmogone.
Branch office buildings are now all limited to 1 per planet and now give more appropriate jobs to the host planet. They also increase local trade production based on those jobs and their corporate resource output is in turn increased by local trade.
Most Corporate Civics now also give bonuses to a specific branch office building, increasing its trade value bonus and receiving Merchant jobs on their Capital from it.
Numerous changes have been made to Criminal Syndicates:
Criminal Empires can now establish commercial pacts. Having a commercial pact with a Criminal Empire will replace all criminal buildings with their "lawful" counterpart. As long as the commercial pact remains, criminal branch offices will not be removed from the planet.
All Criminal branch office buildings have had their crime value set to 25 and give one Criminal Job alongside a regular Job.
We have also added a crime floor to non-criminal branch office buildings on empires they have a trade agreement with, which means there will always be a minimum amount of crime on the branch office planet. Criminal branch offices are also up to 25% more profitable on high crime planets.
Balance-wise, these buildings are more impactful, so branch office buildings now cost influence, and branch offices now take up 5 empire size instead of 2.
Oh, and we have also allowed Megacorps to open branch offices on other Megacorps... The influence cost is doubled when built on a planet owned by another Megacorp.
Mammalian Portraits
Thanks, Gruntsatwork. Now a message from Content Design Lead CGInglis:
And now my deer friends, one mooo-re surprise for you! The Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update brings ten paws-itively stunning new Mammalian portraits to the base game!
Glass of milk, standing in between extinction in the cold, and explosive radiating growth…
The Gremlin
A regal Hippopotaxeno
My, what big teeth you have.
The secrets of enlightenment are waiting.
Next Week
Next week we’ll start talking about how Pops will change and might pull up the new Planet UI. Since the branch itself is still very full of placeholders, we’ll be using the design mockups while explaining the changes.
See you then!
Stellaris Dev Diary #368 - 4.0 Changes: Part 2
Hello everyone!
Today we’re going to take a deeper look at some of the ways we’re adjusting game pacing through changes to Galaxy Generation, Message Settings, Events and Anomalies. Then we’ll take a peek at the Focus system, the Empire Timeline, and a few other changes.
Some of this has already been covered in the announcement diary, but I’ll be providing more up-to-date screenshots and more details. As this is from a build that is still in active development, there will be placeholder icons or temporary text in some of these screenshots, and all of these are still subject to change.
Pacing Adjustments
Stellaris is a game with many moving parts, each of which interact with other elements to produce a complex whole. Small adjustments in one spot can have significant effects in another, and in the end there can be unexpected impact to the general pacing of the game and overall economy.
Galaxy Generation
As mentioned in Dev Diary #366, we’ve gone through all of the scripted systems and done a normalization pass on the frequency of these systems appearing, as well as preventing many of them from appearing in empire starting clusters. Some other adjustments have been made to generation as a whole, which should distribute non-guaranteed habitable worlds a bit better and reduce the likelihood of massive clusters of them right around your homeworld.
There were comments in the thread asking for the ability to easily change these weights. Since most of them now use scripted variables, they’ll be very easy to change with mods. # SYSTEM INITIALIZERS @spawn_system_rare = 0.1 @spawn_system_uncommon = 0.5 @spawn_system_base = 1 @spawn_system_slightlycommon = 2 @spawn_system_common = 4 @spawn_system_verycommon = 8 @spawn_system_extreme = 16 @spawn_system_max = 99999
@spawn_system_enclave = 100 # first enclave uses this, rest use extreme
As the pool of anomalies and prescripted systems with guaranteed anomalies have also grown over the years, we’ve adjusted the anomaly spawn chance increment a bit to compensate.
Leader Traits
A minor change from the original announcement is that we’ve implemented a suggestion from the forum thread to have the trait selection levels on even levels - it’s much cleaner overall. Leaders still begin with a starting trait at level 1.
If you have trait selections to make, the leader level up Notifications will show the green “call to action”. If you don’t, they’ll have a more subdued monochrome icon.
Leader positions will also have a significantly greater effect on which traits will be selected for players without Galactic Paragons or those that prefer automatic trait selection. For those that prefer picking leader traits themselves, this bias is instead reflected in which traits are selected for the pool of possible traits whenever a new trait is available.
In Settings, we’re also letting you choose what you would like your default automatic trait selection to be. Any time you take over an empire as the primary human player (a distinction that is primarily relevant for co-op gameplay), it will make sure that the Auto Select Leader Traits box is set to your preference.
Events, Messages, and Notifications
We’re going through many events, messages, and notifications to reduce the number of popups that disrupt your general gameplay. While major events still appear as popups, those that don’t require an immediate response or are purely informational have been converted into notifications or toasts.
The Artisans and Mirror Dimension can wait until I’ve finished what I’m currently doing.
As we’ve been doing this pass, we’ve updated some of the messages that have been converted into toasts, to make them more informative at a glance.
Empire Focuses and the Timeline
While designing the Empire Focuses we had several thoughts.
Stellaris is a dynamic game full of wonder and possibilities. Our sandbox nature means predefined and structured trees cannot work for us.
Tasks provided by Focuses should help guide newer players through the game, providing suggestions for short and medium term goals.
Behaving in a manner consistent with your Empire Focus should naturally complete the Tasks from that category.
Empire Focus categories are Conquest, Exploration, and Development. (Names subject to change.)
Rewards for progress within a Focus category should be intangible.
Any rewards you get should feel narratively consistent with your empire’s behavior. For instance, acting as an aggressive militarist should naturally guide your researchers to theorizing applicable technologies.
These rewards should reduce the need to rely on lucky draws from the tech pool if you want to pursue your Focus.
The Empire Timeline and Focus share a tab in the Situation Log.
The current mockup of the Timeline tab. Some differences will exist between this and the final version.
Tasks come in four different categories - Conquest, Exploration, or Development correspond to the three different Focuses, and there are some very basic Tasks at the beginning that are considered “Core”. Completing a Task grants progress within its associated category; Core tasks grant progress in all three.
Many of the early game tasks are generally straightforward. The tooltips try to give some advice about how to complete them.
At any time your empire will have five tasks offered, weighted toward your selected Focus. Tasks complete automatically and retroactively, so if you’ve already completed an Archaeology Site, it will complete immediately if you draw it. If you have a Task that either feels impossible or isn’t something you want to do, you can discard it for a small Unity cost.
Many of the rewards for progression along a Focus are (currently) research options thematically associated with the Focus. For example, the first Conquest milestone grants Doctrine: Fleet Support as a guaranteed research option, while others in the line include Specialized Combat Computers and Destroyers. You’ll still have to research them, but we’re happy with how your actual actions in game have an impact on the ideas your researchers are coming up with.
The Empire Timeline shows many of the key events of your empire. Beginning with your Origin as the starting point, important milestones will be logged as they happen. Empire firsts feature prominently on the timeline, such as your first colony or the first time you’ve been humiliated by a Fallen Empire, but some other crucial moments are listed as well, such as war declarations, megastructures, when a crisis appeared, or when an accursed rival stole your Galatron.
The timeline has several zoom levels to let you see a general overview of what happened at a glance, or a detailed list of interesting moments.
Hard Reset
In the 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re adding a new Origin to the Synthetic Dawn story pack called Hard Reset.
As a warning, this Origin gets pretty dark (even for Stellaris), very quickly.
In this Origin, you begin as the cybernetic battle thralls of an advanced Driven Assimilator that have suddenly lost connection to the gestalt intelligence. Naturally, you were outfitted with some of the finest combat cybernetics available.
Your civilization begins in an immediate fight for your lives.
Thankfully, as the elite battle thralls of your former masters, you excel at violence. This is good, because you’ll need to fight through rogue barrier fleets that still infest nearby systems.
I’m sure everything on Dream Loop is fine. No need to investigate further, right?
As with Broken Shackles, the exploration of yourselves as a people is a core part of this Origin, with factions forming a little while after you gain your independence.
Your sudden independence has also left your populace with some traits that represent your nature as Assimilator battle thralls. As you discover more about your past, you’ll have opportunities to either mitigate or enhance these traits, either by pursuing de-cyberization or by embracing the power of the machine. An alternate path exists where you can instead accept your conflicted nature and… Well, I won’t spoil what happens on that path.
Achievements
As part of the development process, we decided to take this opportunity to review some of the rules around gaining achievements. As I think that many of the simpler ones are a great tool for letting you know that you’re playing the game “correctly”, so we’ve made a change.
Ironman mode is no longer required to earn most Stellaris achievements. An unmodified game checksum and being in single-player remain as requirements.
The "Victorious" achievement has been updated to "Win the game through any victory condition in Ironman mode."
Next Week
We’re still working on getting things like the pop and planet changes presentable, so next week we’ll likely be talking about Trade and Logistics.
See you then!
Stellaris Dev Diary #367 - 4.0 Changes: Part 1
by Eladrin
Greetings, Stellaris Community!
Last week we announced the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, today we’re going to start going through some of the changes coming in it. As mentioned before, the changes we’ll be going through in the next few dev diaries are still scorching hot on the development branch, and may change drastically before final release.
That said, the ones I’ll be talking about today have cooled off a little bit and are pretty stable at this point.
Precursor Selection
Let’s start with a simple one that I already leaked to you back in December.
The Advanced Settings tab when you’re setting up a new game will now have a section that lets you set which Precursors are available in your galaxy.
The galaxy will be split into slices and the available Precursors distributed as they are currently - in the above example, the First League and Cybrex would not appear for anyone in this galaxy.
You are free to set the number of available Precursors to whatever number you desire, even none, but remember that in multiplayer games, each Precursor chain can only be completed by a single player. We recommend having at least four, to keep a sense of uncertainty and wonder in the galaxy, but it’s up to you if you want to force a specific Precursor.
The Stellaris Databank
Back in the Stellaris 3.8 ‘Gemini’ update we introduced ‘Concepts’, as our variant of Tooltips-within-Tooltips. We’ve been iterating on how we use them over time, and they’ve become a great asset in helping explain the complexities of Stellaris.
In the Stellaris 4.0 ‘Phoenix’ update, we’re adding a compendium of sorts that contains Concepts in a searchable form, the Stellaris Databank.
Concepts in the Databank are divided into categories, and can themselves include further Concepts. Clicking the icon in the top right searches for the Concept in the Stellaris wiki, for more detailed information.
Searching for “Alloys” gives us every Concept that includes the word, sorting the most relevant to the top.
If you have a Concept open, clicking will open the Databank, if you would like to know more.
We’re interested in seeing how you use the Databank and how it can be improved in the future.
Species Modification Changes
We gave you a quick preview of the Species menu last week, but now we’ll go a little more in depth. The Species screen now provides you with more information about the various species in your empire, including showing the number of trait picks they might have remaining.
The template modification window itself has been remade to provide better sorting of positive and negative traits, and listing them by value, making it easier to find the traits you’re looking for.
My serviles should be delicious, don’t you think?
The new flow removes a few clicks from the process, starting the Special Project immediately.
If time is not of the essence, instead of using a Special Project to modify your species, you can designate a template as the Species Default, and let them integrate over to that default template slowly over time. Certain traditions or buildings might affect the speed of this integration process.
Actually, scratch that. Everybody should be delicious.
Ship Designer Changes
Like some of the other UIs we’re exploring today, the Ship Designer has had some quality of life updates.
We’ve taken the Ship Roles that were introduced in the 3.6 ‘Orion’ update and made selecting one part of the basic ship design flow and giving them a better representation than a scrollable text list. Some pain points of ship design, like the Auto-generate changes button blocking saving, have been removed, and in general it’s a faster and easier process to create a general ship design.
We’ve added a “Custom” role for veteran players that want to design the ship from scratch, or you can take one of these generated templates and modify them to suit your needs before saving.
Next Week
Next week we’ll go over more details regarding the improvements to Message Settings, as well as a selection of other features that are still so hot in development that they’re still glowing placeholder-magenta. If I can’t get you decent screenshots, I’ll post some of the concepts and explain what we’re in the middle of.
