Hi all, Jamor here. I'm filling in for Wiz this week, as I want my Game Director to focus on post-launch support for Cherryh, our biggest update yet.

Today's dev diary is about 2.0.2_beta: the new build available as an optional beta for Steam users right now (note for Paradoxplaza Launcher users: we're using Steam as our beta testing platform at this time, if you want to try it out please use the Steam key that came with your Plaza purchase).

When we made 2.0, we knew that the scale of changes would be huge, and therefore I budgeted a larger than normal amount of dev time for post-launch support. The objective is to absorb and process player feedback, and perform bug fixes as well as balance tweaks and general improvements. There are almost as many unique play styles as there are Stellaris players out there, and our objective is to hit a good balance point for the maximum number, which you can then further tweak to your own preferences with the new game customization options.

2.0.2 is planned to be a "rolling beta", meaning we will continue to update it at intervals when we have new tweaks/fixes that we want to push to you. Your feedback on it will be crucial for determining the content of the final, official version, so please continue to play and tell us how it goes.

We especially want to make sure we get War Exhaustion/Status Quo Peace right, so that it produces believable and satisfying war results for the greatest number of people. As such, the initial changes in this patch are experimental and we'll continue to iterate on them throughout the test period. Please don't hesitate to give us your constructive feedback.

Spoiler: Click to view patchnotes

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.0.2 ###########################
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###################
# Feature
###################
* You are no longer forced to make peace at 100% war exhaustion, instead your Influence and Unity monthly gains are reduced to 0 and a happiness penalty is applied to all Pops until you make peace
* Occupation no longer contributes to War Exhaustion, but instead is displayed as a separate factor in war overview, to make it clearer what you need to do in order to enforce demands
* War Overview no longer attempts to calculate a winner in battles, but simply displays war exhaustion gained by each side
* Marauder raiding fleets are now neutral to everyone except their intended target so they won't wreck everything in their path when they go a-viking
* Fixed Gestalt Consciousness empires using Trading Hub starbase module and Offworld Trading Company starbase building, they now use Resource Reprocessor and External Acquisitions Area (name/flavor difference only)
* It is now possible to test-fire a World Cracker on habitable (but uninhabited) planets in your space
* Added tier 5 Dark Matter thrusters that can only be gained by scavenging Fallen Empire ships
* Transcendent Learning ascension perk has been added to the game, and it increases leader level cap and empire leader cap
* Megastructure resources are now affected by country modifiers
* Ship sizes now have a default combat behavior and will prefer computers of that type if auto-generated (Picket for Destroyers, etc)
* Added some more logic for making sure ship auto-complete doesn't switch your desired combat role
* Space stations now use the country_mult modifier instead of the tile_mult modifier and no longer get the tile_add modifier
* When a new ruler is elected, the previous ruler that was voted out of office (if alive) will now attempt to take over the job that was opened up by the newly elected ruler, assuming the leader class matches. Back to the mines, Mr. Ex-President.

###################
# Balance
###################
* Reduced War Exhaustion per ship and army killed
* Militarist ethics now gain -10%/-20% war exhaustion gain instead of army damage bonus
* Technologies that reduce claim cost now also decrease war exhaustion gain
* You now get war exhaustion a bit slower while fighting a Liberation War
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance
* Base unity income increased from 1 to 2
* Base tradition cost increased from 56 to 100 (does not affect the cost increase from number of traditions)
* Tradition unity cost per system reduced from 2% to 1%
* Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship build speed techs now also reduce build cost of that ship type by 5%
* Habitats now have their own fortress building (Security Zone) that is effective at unrest reduction but provides only a few defense armies and no FTL inhibitor or bombardment protection
* It is now possible to mod away serviles & pre-sapient traits if you have completed biological ascension
* Egalitarian ethics effect on faction influence increased from +15%/30% to +25%/50%
* Corvette Focus trait now requires Destroyers tech (as it's hardly a 'focus' if it's the only ship type possible)
* Scout admiral trait reduced from 20% to 10% speed (so Gale-Speed is faster)
* Admiral now always dies when last ship in fleet is destroyed and there are no disengaged ships to move to
* Drone Mining Lasers are now a bit worse against hull and a bit better against shields
* Broken and shattered planets spawned on galaxy generation can now have deposits
* Thrusters now cost different amounts of minerals and give different amounts of evasion based on which ship size they are for (corvette thrusters are cheaper and add more evasion, etc)
* Reduced cost of hiring Marauder leaders to 2000 energy
* Having an enclave in your border now gives +1 opinion per year instead of +1 opinion per month, as the latter made all other opinion boosts rather meaningless
* Increased opinion bonuses for ally of ally and mutual rivals
* Increased opinion penalties of allying rivals
* Tributary wargoal is now a bit easier to enforce
* Combat computers now give evasion_mult instead of evasion_add
* Asteroid Sighted can no longer pop after the first 50 years, to avoid it happening in large sprawling empires with limited time to respond
* First pirate event now tells you the system where they are based
* Increased time limits of all Special Projects requiring a ship in orbit (new minimum is 3 years)
* Federation fleet is now limited to an absolute max naval capacity of 500
* It is now possible to get the gateway activation tech if you know any other empire that has the technology
* When a Federation enforces ideology on an empire, that empire now gets opinion boosts with the entire federation

# Civics
* Citizen Service civic now also increases unity output from fortress and strongholds by 1
* Aristocratic Elite civic now gives +2 leader cap and +2 governor max level instead of +4 leader cap and -50% leader recruitment cost
* Distinguished Admiralty civic increases leader cap by +2
* Driven Assimilators now have the 'Assimilate' total war CB
* Purifier and anti-Purifier CBs no longer require neighboring status (was confusing and unintuitive to players)
* Nationalistic Zeal civic now gives -10% war exhaustion gain instead of +1 rivalries
* Free Haven now gives xeno migration attraction instead of migration attraction

# Traditions
* Expansion adoption effect now gives +50% colony development speed (down from +100%)
* Galactic Ambition expansion tradition now gives -20% starbase upkeep instead of +2 starbase capacity

# Ascension Perks
* Shared Destiny effect on integration cost reduction changed from -50% to -75%
* Nihilistic Acquisition can now be taken by purifier-style empires

# Edicts
* Drone Campaign food cost increased from 100 to 500
* Learning Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* War Drone Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* Patrol Drones planetary edict is now available to all Gestalt Consciousness-empires

###################
# UI
###################
* Added building descriptions to traditions that unlock buildings
* Starbase upgrade cost and Module/Building building cost now properly show modifiers affecting them
* Renamed Growth Speed to Pop Growth Speed to be clearer
* Added the correct icons for megastructures and starbases in the control-groups UI
* Contacts view has been improved
* Government view now displays ruler & heir skill stars
* Heir tooltip no longer displays skill effects (as heir has no skill effects until they become ruler)
* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title
* Galaxy resources now show the amount actually collected, and the tooltips give you the list of applied modifiers
* Resource modifier no longer show decimal values
* Removed pointless decimals for starbase caps, planet caps, naval command cap, and naval capacity
* Added the country resources add and multipliers modifiers to the budget tab
* Improved how the speed modifiers are shown in the starbase upgrade time tooltip
* Added a more clear warning that deleting templates will also disband ships
* Fixed several instances of a Status Quo peace being called a White Peace in peace messages
* Alert for High War Exhaustion is now more helpful
* Traits that are already present in species can now always be re-added while in process of modifying template
* Aura tooltip now differentiates between system-wide friendly auras and fleet-only friendly auras
* Changed the current value of template designs in fleet manager to show the current amount of ships including ones that only are scheduled for retrofit

###################
# AI
###################
* AI now activates some of its anti-crisis logic when under threat from a mid-game crisis like the Great Khan
* AI no longer picks shared destiny unless it has at least one vassal
* Added separate definitions for mid-game and end-game crisis factions, with slightly different AI logic to respond to them
* Fixed another cause of AI endlessly inviting player to the same war

###################
# Modding
###################
* Added a country modifier for war exhaustion gain (when multiple countries are involved on the same side in a war, the averaged modifier of all of them is used)
* add_threat effect now once again takes country scope (generates threat scaled towards whole target empire)

###################
# Bugfix
###################
* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of additive
* Fixed additional potential out of sync issues in multiplayer
* Afterburners can no longer be installed on defense platforms, as lovely as it was to uselessly vent fuel in to space as a gesture of contempt to environmentalists
* Deep Space Black Site now requires you to own a planet in the system, instead of erroneously using the same trigger as trading hub
* All Satrapies are now properly liberated when the Horde fractures into the Diadochi
* Fixed bug where the planet class transition effect started too late
* Fixed adopting the Domination tradition tree not unlocking certain diplomatic actions for eligible Machine Empires
* Fixed auto-exploring science ships doubling up (exploring the same system simultaneously)
* Fixed a CTD. Could sometimes try to merge invalid fleets.
* No longer possible to hold Casus Belli on non-empire factions such as Crises and Marauders
* Galactic core visibility is now lifted when you explore all systems adjacent to it, instead of just one
* Fixed empires not being able to see primitives in other empires' space due to lack of comms spread
* Ships merging in to fleets directly from stations now behave properly
* Fixed scientists not dying when their science ship was destroyed in battle
* Fixed raiding stance not having bombardment graphics on planet being raided
* Fixed tooltips for status column in contacts view to reflect accurately what they represent
* Fixed raiding not always abducting pops when it should, due to bad habitability calculation
* Fixed raiding stance not having the correct pop limit (would abduct at >6 instead of >4 pops)
* Fix a freeze when trying to upgrade technologies more than their max levels
* Fixed Determined Exterminators starting with a farm building
* Construction is now paused for starbases in combat
* Fixed force ethics not correctly calculating a government for the defeated empire's new ethics
* Enigmatic fortress now properly disables even after saving and loading the game (status was not properly saved)
* Iron Fist governor trait is no longer available for Hive Minds, making it disabled for all types of Gestalt Consciousness-empires
* Fixed being unable to land armies on a colony seized by Mutants
* Fix bug where queued items wasn't moved to the new fleet design when a design upgrade becomes available
* Fixed Slaving Despots being far too common an AI personality because of wrongly scripted weights
* Disables the bypass cache when calculating the distance to capital modifier, hopefully solving an OOS issue
* Fixed a crash when quitting to the main menu in the middle of a war
* It should no longer be possible to try to spawn a star system with an invalid star class
* Fix crash when comparing the relative power of a country that has no power
* Prevented fake country from trying to initialize a technology module it does not have for some reason
* UNE now uses correct name list when spawned in Commonwealth games
* Fixed revolting slaves greedily snatching the capital planet when they're not supposed to
* No longer possible to force ideology on Fallen Empires
* Fixed Omega Theory tech sometimes not appearing at the end of the Horizon Signal chain
* Fixed an event-spawned science ship not getting a hyperdrive
* Fixed planet unrest modifiers not being properly recalculated
* Fixed Ascension Theory tech not being available to players who do not own Apocalypse

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN OPT-IN PATCH. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO JOIN IN ORDER TO TEST THE NEW VERSION.

Here's how to opt in:

Right click on Stellaris in your Steam library -> select Properties -> go to the Betas tab -> select "2.0.2_beta"

I'll of course ping this thread and let you know when an updated version of the beta goes out. Thank you all for your support, we think it's really great that we get to work with our fan community to constantly improve the game together.

Make sure to check out next week's Dev Diary for a first look at our development priorities going forward in the...wait for it...POST-APOCALYPSE.

(I've been waiting so long to say that)

Have fun everyone!

 

[Hyomoto]

Apparently it only applies to the attacker, which isn't much better as the defender can still end up winning and exploiting the system exactly as you describe.

The defender already shoulders most malus though, the point even if it isn't working super well, is to encourage the attacker to make peace. You can't force someone into war with you, and the attacker can opt out through white peace or status quo at anytime.

Needs refinement but I agree with the impulse.

 

[Radene]

I really dont get it. Some people whine because of forced status quo and devs change it on a whimp to a really really weak alternative. Please change it back or consider a stronger option. Dont get this 180 degree change in gameplay goals. Nobody ever admits defeat if he thinks he can still turn the tide even when the probs are very very bad. Sunk cost fallacy.

Indeed...everyone was "Mere SECONDS from actually WINNING, honest!" for some reason...

I'll stick to my guns - if the status quo was not to your advantage, then you weren't winning. No matter what you say or how hard you're posturing.

 

[Radene]

The defender already shoulders most malus though, the point even if it isn't working super well, is to encourage the attacker to make peace. You can't force someone into war with you, and the attacker can opt out through white peace or status quo at anytime.

...and just what motivation would the attacker have to do that? Especially when being governed by the average human player?

 

[Tamerlane]

Well you can't be adjacent by gateway since, they all work during peace time (you can't travel out of an enemies gateway). Worm hole connection also don't really count as neighbours, since only one side may have researched wormhole using tech.

But you can claim the other end of a gateway or wormhole and only pay the base 50 Influence. So if I am a traditional conquest based Empire, I can wardec someone on the other side of the galaxy on the cheap, once I have that claim set up. (Getting to them is another matter, if the connection is a closed gateway). Purifiers etc will now be able to do the same, since they can wardec anyone now.

But if I want to do an Ideology/Vassalise/Tributary war, that exact same connection means nothing. Its just not consistent, or fun for those Empire types.

 

[Delthor]

Apparently it only applies to the attacker, which isn't much better as the defender can still end up winning and exploiting the system exactly as you describe.

That makes even less sense. If the defender is at 100% war exhaustion and the attacker is fine with declaring peace, the defender should be the one suffering from penalties. I feel that you should only ever hit this penalty if your opponent has asked for peace and you said no. Anything else means you can game the system to force an opponent who is losing to lose even harder, which makes wars more snowbally. In fact, once you get your opponent to 100% war exhaustion, you can just sit there and avoid doing anything to prolong the penalties they suffer from.

I understand that this penalty is meant to represent the difficulties of continuing a war when your population and forces are exhausted by it, but if it's a defensive war where you're suing for peace and the other side refuses, what does your population expect from you?

 

[BlockBadger]

Anyone else noticing the tooltips for ethics are not updated to the patch notes changes? Militerest still gives army damage for instance, without the reduced war fatigue.
Same as some of the changes noted in 2.0, like the tooltips for social welfare and utopian abundance still saying 1.25 and 1.5 despite the notes said the cost was going down?

 

[Starcomet]

I do not like starbases/outpost costing 1 energy AND increasing as you upgrade them. The modules already cost energy as others have said and that on top of the increasing maintenance would make one even more picky about picking choke points and upgrading star bases. I am not sure why people are saying they have energy overflowing as I do not have that issue and I am pretty much in my mid/late game.

 

[Matt516]

You can't force someone into war with you, and the attacker can opt out through white peace or status quo at anytime.

No, the attacker can only "opt out" through status quo if the defender agrees to it. A defender who is winning has very little reason to ever agree to a status quo, because they can keep the attacker suffering WE penalties pretty much indefinitely while they suffer from nothing and get income from occupied systems with no research/unity penalties. The system encourages this kind of bizarre and exploity behavior.

 

[Alliegorical]

Check your tradition cost and see if it makes sense. Word in this thread is that it's still broken in the Beta, just the other direction. Might help to post a screenshot if you're seeing the same thing.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...unity-costs-are-now-multiplied.1073408/page-7

Yeah, something is off. Unless I did my math wrong, the cost ought for my next tradition ought to be 46,099 unity, but instead it's 29,331.

I'll check the bug forums and if there's a thread already, I'll repost this screenshot in it, or create one if not.

It's worth remembering that this is a save that started in 2.0.1, so it's possible that things are working as intended with games that begin in 2.0.2, though that seems unlikely.

 

[NothingToLose]

* Outposts now cost 1 energy maintenance

It took me decades just to not be short on energy, this is going to make the early game even harder on your economy. Already you can't field a decent fleet the early game without almost having negative energy. Slowing the early game even further is really not the way to go.

 

[treb]

Afterburners can no longer be installed on defense platforms, as lovely as it was to uselessly vent fuel in to space as a gesture of contempt to environmentalists

BOOO! Galactic warming is a egalitarian/xenophile conspiracy theory

 

[Almirante]

I do not think the added upkeep cost to outposts is a good change.

Additionally, I do not think making marauders neutral is a good change. Marauders are going pillaging, they should not care to differentiate between the empires from its capital system to the target system.

 

[NothingToLose]

Additionally, I do not think making marauders neutral is a good change. Marauders are going pillaging, they should not care to differentiate between the empires from its capital system to the target system.

Only marauders that are specifically going to target someone are neutral. They want to attack that specific empire, or have been paid to, so they want to make sure they get there.

 

[Hyomoto]

...and just what motivation would the attacker have to do that? Especially when being governed by the average human player?

I like you @Radene but you block out half the argument sometimes. I'm advocating this is a step in the right direction to address the imbalance between attacker and defender.

Ideally the penalties will encourage the attacker to consider more strongly what they can accomplish, while not specifically penalizing empires that rely on wholesale destruction. Needs work, I agree, but I agree with the direction.

 

[Alliegorical]

was probably to compensate for the extra energy one would get from expansion tree's -20% starbase upkeep cost. You only need 4 energy worth of building upkeep on the starbase for to be less than the current system. The main idea is to probably keep the energy production down.

More generally, I'd say the change was probably just to compensate for the fact that everyone seems to be swimming in energy in 2.0 pretty much effortlessly. This seems a fair way to correct for that, especially since the halving of the unity malus would otherwise have made wide expansion much more attractive.

 

[MarQan]

Ah, I see. You are just being boorish. Very well. The exploit is your scientist doesn't die, so yeah, that part is fixed. Having a fleet tag along is not micro managing any more than picking technologies.

Do you even know what micromamagent is? The compulsive need to manage everything. The addition of options is not some inherent flaw, the need to manage every one could be, but the question is time investment versus payoff and assigning a fleet to follow a scientist around is a very small time investment that manages itself.

I wrote down why "invincible" scientists is not an exploit and even if it is, it's still possible with the fix.. specifically to prevent/skip the discussion we're having right now.
If anything you're the boorish for disregarding half my comment, but I didn't want to bring that up..

That is not at all what micromanagement means in context of strategy games, especially grand strategies.
On insane, aggressive games it's usually not even a quesiton whether you want to micro or not.

This "fix" does not provide any options whatsoever, I'm not sure what you meant by that.

Assigning a fleet might be a solution but that's a completely different issue and if you want to change exploration that way then there are other questions regarding that.
I'm simply saying that the "fix" was unnecessary and unreasonable.
Currently military escort doesn't work, because a fleet has to wait for the science vessel to arrive in the unexplored system before they can start spinning up the FTL.

If you want to add more risks to exploration that's also okay, but I strongly disagree that it should be a 10% reserach bonus and a potentially derailed tech progression.

 

[Hyomoto]

No, the attacker can only "opt out" through status quo if the defender agrees to it. A defender who is winning has very little reason to ever agree to a status quo, because they can keep the attacker suffering WE penalties pretty much indefinitely while they suffer from nothing and get income from occupied systems with no research/unity penalties. The system encourages this kind of bizarre and exploity behavior.

Given the attackers role in this, a vindictive defender is somewhat expected. I agree with you that the defender shouldn't be able to keep a war going indefinitely though.

 

[Hype]

The plan is to update the beta as we go along with new fixes and tweaks, until we have an official version. Won't update it every single day and spam people with downloads, but will do so at reasonable intervals when we have a useful package of changes for you.

So how long until you put back forced status quo? I have no intention of playing the game without it, I guess I'll be sticking on 2.0.1 unless I can mod this.

 

[Summin Cool]

Why exactly are the devs punishing wide so hard? Not sure if these change have been thought out very well.

 

[Radene]

I like you @Radene but you block out half the argument sometimes. I'm advocating this is a step in the right direction to address the imbalance between attacker and defender.

Ideally the penalties will encourage the attacker to consider more strongly what they can accomplish, while not specifically penalizing empires that rely on wholesale destruction. Needs work, I agree, but I agree with the direction.

I don't agree. "Empires that rely on wholesale destruction" should not be given a free lease just because subjecting them to the same rules would make them more difficult to play. Except they really were meant to be the "Mindless map painting" type of gameplay. In fact, the system getting replaced was supposed to make attackers consider what they could accomplish, and instead of adapting to it, people got grumpy over not accomplishing what they set out to do, instead of them adapting their gameplay, they demanded the system to be changed to fir their playstyle.

Now the forced peace is out of the picture, and occupations don't even tie into the war exhaustion mechanic anymore. That simply makes no sense to me. It's as if Paradox wants to make the "endlessly expanding and exterminating" playstyle the only viable one.