by Eladrin
Hello, Stellaris Community!
Europe swelters under the summer’s first heatwave, and yesterday we updated the 4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Open Beta on the stellaris_test branch with some more changes.
Stellaris 4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Open Beta Release Notes
New changes are in italics.
Feature
Added a Resource Abundance slider in galaxy settings.
This slider ranges from “Scarce” to x5 in 0.25 increments, where x1 is approximately the resource abundance of v4.3 and x5 is essentially 4.4’s “resources everywhere”.
The default is x2. We do recognize that this is a little confusing, but it gives you more control of getting it where you want.
Added Waystation Voidlure modules
Added Arkship Voidlure Array module that allows you to right-click on a system to lure space fauna.
Fleet automation menus now offer per-action options.
Nomad Arkships and Logistic Ships can fine-tune Harvest, Strip Mine, and Deep Scan automation, including whether to Harvest unsurveyed, depositless, waystation, friendly, or hostile-owned worlds, and whether to rescan when Deep Scanning.
Fleet automation settings can be saved as the default for a ship type and applied to all ships of that type at once, and each fleet remembers the settings it was last given.
Construction Automation now has options for Mining Stations, Research Stations, Observation Posts and Special Projects.
Added the Explore automation order to Arkships. Note: Arkships with the Explore order will attempt to navigate to Points of Interest if possible.
Improvement
Space Fauna now disables waystations instead of destroying them. They will be re-enabled once the fauna leaves or is destroyed.
Added a fallback event for the CFL if the tournament goes on for more than 3 years, this will ensure that you don't end up with fleets that can never repair
Details map mode now toggles between 3 states: Normal -> Detailed -> Hidden -> Normal.
Clarified the map mode tooltips.
Logistic Ship automation now defaults to on for Harvest Resources and off for Waystation collection.
The game will now recalculate species rights on loading a save game.
Upgrading fleet will reissue upgrade order if one got interrupted because of the mobile starbase jumping away to another system.
Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers can research machine assembly technologies to upgrade their passengers
Regular Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Robot Assembly Plants building
Completed Archaeological Sites and Astral Rifts will now be hidden in a non detailed galaxy map mode.
Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.
Balance
Operational Reserves Changes:
Operational Reserves now track Energy and Minerals 1:1 (previously 3:1).
Maximum Operational Reserves now scale with the number and tier of owned Arkships (base 15,000, plus 5,000 / 7,500 / 10,000 per Tier I / II / III Arkship) instead of a fixed cap.
Civilian Arkships grant an additional 2,500 Operational Reserve capacity per Tier.
Resource Silos, Fallen Empire Resource Silos, Arkship Resource Silos, and Waystation Logistics Silos now raise a Nomadic empire's maximum Operational Reserves.
Added a Critical stage to the Operational Reserves track with severe research, Unity, and Alloy penalties; the Festival, Conserve, and Burn approaches now gate on reserve stage rather than fixed thresholds.
The Critical Operational Reserves stage now also penalizes the populations the reserves sustain: Lithoid pops lose Happiness, pop growth, and Job Efficiency, and Mechanical and Machine pops lose Job Efficiency.
Wanderlust now gives some of its bonuses immediately, and the second half after completing 4 categories, not all of them. Category bonuses and progression remain unchanged.
Rewards from the Arkship Readiness Checklist now last 20 years.
Rebalanced the Ranger Paladin trait.
Reduced the opinion penalties empires hold against Nomadic Empires for strip-mining, reprocessing planets, and Exodus Jumps, and made these penalties decay more quickly.
Nomadic Primal Calling now starts with a Voidlure Array equipped on the Arkship
Removed the nomadic tradition swap for Domestication tradition finisher
Rebalanced the Passenger Satisfaction situation for Forever Cruise to allow staying in the middle stage longer
The Champion's forge now waits 20 years before firing instead of 10, this should give the galaxy a bit longer to find each other before all getting introduced at the tournament.
Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.
Arkship District Specializations that increase weapon damage (Laser Capacitors, Flight Decks, Ammunition Lines, or Missile Silos) now also add +0.15 strategic resource upkeep to Soldiers.
Species with Mutagenic Habitability living on Arkships will now gain 50% habitability (like Regular Arkship Habitability and Habitat Auto-modded habitability) instead of 30%
Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.
Bugfix
Arkships now have a 10 year cooldown after benefiting from a Max Aura effect, meaning you can't chain them to get a level 10 ascension Arkship super early.
Nomads can now build Megastructures in a system containing one of their Waystations even if the system has not been surveyed.
Fixed that Tombworld Earth was spawning way too often, so often that it would spawn instead of the UNE when playing the GRS or CoM.
Fixed an issue where pre-FTL earths couldn't have defensive armies (sorry this does not fix the issue of not having the cool unique armies :frowning2: )
Assault Armies will no longer split into separate Transport Fleets after leaving the planet surface.
Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.
Fixed a very rare case where if you settled and left the event open for too long another empire could claim the system. The fix is delaying them from claiming the system for 300 days. Please make a decision before then.
The CFL should no longer accept Orbital Rings as contestants (even though that’s why they call it a Championship Ring, right?)
Added a fallback if your arkship was in a hyperjump when progressing through the adAkkaria event chains
Due to legacy script your capital arkship was never able to find precursors
Stopped Scan Debris Contract from auto-cancelling on accept
Blocked the Sectors Map Mode for Nomads.
Fixed habitats not using the correct entity from your chosen shipset.
Fixed some scripted issues with refugee modifiers.
Fixed issues with Payback and Broken Shackles district specializations.
Fixed farming colony designation not applying to agri-drones.
Bio-Repurposing tradition now provides the nomadic effects for nomadic necromancers instead of the necromancer effects.
Brought the cost and upkeep of the Nanite Hub waystation module in line with the equivalent starbase building.
Fixed the Realign Shields decision not recognising some pulsar systems.
Living and Grid Amalgamated species now have bespoke living standards so they don't use consumer goods.
Fixed Astro Harvester job modifiers not applying in some cases.
Harvesting a celestial body that has no deposit no longer incurs a diplomatic opinion penalty.
The Creativity Exhibition Vault now boosts Cruise Passengers for Forever Cruise empires, instead of applying its bonus to Bio-Trophies they do not have.
Buildings that can be built on a planet or its orbital ring (Psi Corps, Planetary Shield Generator, Galactic Stock Exchange, Embassy, Noble Estates, Slave Processing Facility) can no longer be built as both a colony building and an Arkship starbase building at the same time.
The Galactic Stock Exchange can no longer be built on both a planet and its orbital ring at the same time.
Fixed pops sometimes being stuck in the Assimilation citizenship or stratum.
Pops that already have the cybernetic or psionic trait are no longer flagged for assimilation they do not need.
Negative arkship modifiers from Grand Refurbishment and Operational Checklist are removed when another empire conquers the arkship, so you aren't stuck with a bunch of negative modifiers and no way to remove them.
Arkship can now issue a survey command by clicking the survey button and clicking on the system in galaxy map
Fixed the tooltip information where the survey single planet vs surveying the whole system information was mixed up
Fixed Waystations, Arkships and modded starbases that have forced components from starbase modules and buildings regressing their designs and losing components.
If you are too slow and don't stop the Khan Aspirant from becoming the Khan they now properly despawn, avoiding a scenario where there are two Khans.
If you play with 0 marauders enabled and as a Heirs of the Khan empire, then the backup Marauder empire will avoid Fallen Empire systems so that they don't get killed in the first few weeks, making you the Khan while others are still figuring out Blue Lasers.
Fixed a crash when updating waystation networks
Ranger Lodge now correctly informs that Biologists are converted into Rangers, instead of saying Rangers are converted into Rangers
Arkship construction notification now mentions an arkship, not a starbase
Missions counters can now be infinite
Fixed missing localization for message descriptions
Fixed the End-Bringers' shrouded world failing to spawn in games featuring Nomadic empires.
Fixed Arkships unintentionally syncing to the same auto-generated design. Building or upgrading one Arkship will no longer sometimes overwrite armaments or utilities on others of the same type.
Fleets that are repairing or upgrading now correctly sync their FTL, Jump Drive, and Catapult actions.
Fixed an issue with generated empire adjectives.
Inetian trader special project bound to planet, meaning that if your science ship were to blow up you can still progress
The Claimant event's description received a scope fix
"Secrets of the Past" event from "Biomorphosis" Ascension Situation blocked for Nomads
Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.
Nomads will no longer get double the benefit from their own resource producing megastructures. Megastructures will no longer be giving resources directly and a waystation will always be needed to collect those resources.
Planets can now be bombarded during first contact war
Contact view now properly closes if diplomacy window is opened
Fixed some megastructure effects showing incorrect modifier icons and “+100%”.
Rogue Servitors can no longer take a machine species as their secondary species when playing as a Forever Cruise. The machine can not be pampered.
(Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.
Pops can now migrate from Arkships
Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building
Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled
When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly.
Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.
Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.
Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate
Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight
Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation
Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier
Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers
Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description
Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active
Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds
Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!
You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal
Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set
Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist
Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.
Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.
Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.
Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits.
Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets.
Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.
Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description
Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin
The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.
Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.
Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.
Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.
Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.
Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.
Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.
The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.
Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation
Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.
Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.
Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow
AI nomads no longer accept and ignore Build Waystation contracts when at capacity
The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads
Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined
Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.
Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers
Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.
Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar
Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.
Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal
AI
Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.
The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships.
Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.
UI/UX
The Operational Reserves situation now shows its capacity breakdown and stored/total readout in the Situation Log instead of an empty Finisher Effects panel.
The Operational Reserves topbar tooltip now shows a predicted monthly change with per-resource Energy and Minerals contributions, each with a resource icon and coloured +/- value, and a Hold-ALT hint to expand the produced/consumed breakdown.
When enabling nomads in empire creation, the civilian arkship is now selected by default.
Arkships no longer show false clearable-blocker icons in the outliner.
Fixed incorrect Arkship button texts in the planet view.
Anomaly window now also shows the name of the anomaly
Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.
Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log
Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list.
The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings.
In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.
Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.
Performance
Fixed science ship Excavate and Astral Rift automation causing a recurring daily stutter when no reachable target was available.
Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.
Stability
Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups.
Modding
Situations can define total_progress with per-stage section_weight for progress bars whose length and stage bands scale at runtime, with auto-generated _max_progress_add/_mult country modifiers and a situation_progress_percent trigger.
Situations, stages, and approaches support custom_tooltip and custom_tooltip_with_modifiers (replacing the approach-only active_tooltip), and situations can override their Situation Log Active Effects and Finisher Effects panel titles and bodies.
Added the orbital_ring_and_arkship_equivalent_absent scripted trigger.
Starbase modules now also support `scripted_effect_cooldown`, `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag`, and `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag_desc`
and are now optional for is_point_of_interest.
Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.
Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.
Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).
One of the big changes in this update is a revamp on the Automation menus for ships, intended to give you more control over what they’re doing.
Harvest from empty space, not my friends.
The Return of our Ethical Refactoring
Well that title certainly sounds ominous.
Back in February, we briefly added a “risky” change to the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta, relating to having mixed ethics within a single pop group. At the time we deemed it “not ready for release”, but we’re still interested in getting it into the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian Update, as it’s absolutely essential for Willpower (releasing in 4.6).
Since it’s so important for our future plans, we want to put this through a longer Open Beta period, which means we’ll have two of them running at once.
The 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta is a very early build, so includes a number of other experimental changes which may or may not make it to the final release - consider everything in this branch as tentative and yet to be balanced.
MacOS builds can also run 4.5 natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation. We’d like to get stability and performance information from the community about this change. (Internally, it seems to be pretty nice.)
Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Release Notes
Feature
Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:
THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.
Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.
Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently
Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently
Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth
Simplify factions randomization logic
Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.
Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads
Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:
Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.
Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.
Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet.
Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).
Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.
Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)
Improvement
Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.
Balance
Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.
The Cybernetic species trait now provides an additional +5% Job Efficiency.
Hive minds which encounter genetic defects during cyberization can now choose a cyberisation policy.
Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier
Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).
The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.
The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.
Bugfix
AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.
Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.
Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.
Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.
Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.
Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.
The Branching Out modifier from the Cyberization situation now gives +10% Trader Job Efficiency.
Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules).
Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.
Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.
The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.
Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.
Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.
Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.
Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).
AI
AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.
Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.
AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.
AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.
Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.
The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.
The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.
AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them.
A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.
AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.
Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.
UI/UX
Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.
Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.
Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered
Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.
Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.
Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.
Performance
macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.
Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated.
Stability
Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.
Modding
Remove obsolete faction parameters
Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).
Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.
Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic
Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers
Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`
Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.
Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.
I was hoping to get the 4.5 Open Beta up alongside this dev diary, but we ran into some issues that we were still tracking down while I was writing this dev diary earlier this week. We hope to resolve those and have the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta available before the weekend on the stellaris_test_4.5 beta branch, though it may slip to early next week.
We expect to update the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta with more changes next week (a day or two after 4.4.5 releases). It’s looking like Nomadic Cosmogenesis and Storm Chasers might have first drafts in that update, along with some fixes to Nomadic Purge Vassals (and purging in general).
What’s Next?
Next week’s dev diary will focus on the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta update, and will be the last dev diary until August, though there are likely to be ongoing updates to the 4.5 Open Beta during July.
See you then!
