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 ###########################
#################################################################

###################
# 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]

@MarQan - I'll be honest, some of what you write I agree with and think is interesting but you have a very abrasive style. I'll assume it's me and try to be more objective but hopefully that explains how I have responded thus far.

It seems we are working from different data, I don't see how protecting your scientist with a fleet costs 10% research bonus or derails tech progression. My suggestion was to allow a fleet to protect a scientist as an alternative to making them invincible, which is presently not possible. It makes me think I'm addressing something you weren't discussing.

 

[Nephrahim]

Does this patch fix the Unity scaling bug (I saw some changes to the unity but it seemed more like generic buffs then a bugfix.)

IS it worth it to update my ironman game to this to fix that? I'm playing a wide Hivemind so I'd like to be able to unlock my ascension paths...

 

[Elfien]

Hello this is my first post on the forums i would like to say if you could find a way to make more viable the liberation wars an vasallation wars
in the previous vertions they were useful and archivable but now is plain restrictive the wais this is handle becaus te need to be relatible superior to the objective wich is discouraging and nos so great in my opinion
srry my bad english fellow mates

 

[Malonex]

* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change their name and/or title

AAAHHHH YES

 

[Almond_Brown]

"Occupation no longer contributes to war exhaustion", how does that make any sense at all? That should be the main source of WE, because that's what's the clearest sign that you failed at your role of defending the people of your empire and their property.

I believe that means that after a Planet has been "Occupied" it is out of the War. The Planet is Lost and the inhabitants WE is lost/pointless as well.

 

[Admiral_Obvious]

I believe that means that after a Planet has been "Occupied" it is out of the War. The Planet is Lost and the inhabitants WE is lost/pointless as well.

From what I've seen, the game didn't even calculate planetary occupation as a part of the WE anyways, it just factored into the math for the AI to surrender.

Also, why does my WE go up along with the rest of my allies, even though I don't actually participate in the war? Shouldn't WE be calculated separately for each participant, and have the average used for final factoring into the WE for the whole alliance? It seems dumb that I'm getting 0 influence/unity gain, just because my ally lost a few battleships.

 

[Radene]

I believe that means that after a Planet has been "Occupied" it is out of the War. The Planet is Lost and the inhabitants WE is lost/pointless as well.

That doesn't make any more sense to me either. It's as if the empire who lost the planet would collectively pretend they were just hallucinating about the times when the planet was still part of the empire. And as if the empire who occupied it collectively pretended it always belonged to them.

 

[Alliegorical]

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.

As much as the removal of forced status quo churns my stomach, I'm still giving 2.0.2 the old college try, because it's really the least we could do. If nobody who likes the mechanic plays the beta, how can we offer any legitimate feedback that might encourage the devs to reconsider? And who knows, it may not be so bad.

 

[Iacs]

* Fixed Omega Theory tech sometimes not appearing at the end of the Horizon Signal chain

Famous overlycomplicated code

prerequisites = { "tech_akx_worm_1" "tech_akx_worm_2" }
 weight = 0
 weight_modifier = {
  modifier = {
   add = 60
   has_technology = tech_akx_worm_1
   has_technology = tech_akx_worm_2
  }
 }

instead of

prerequisites = { "tech_akx_worm_1" "tech_akx_worm_2" }
 weight = 60

How many times have you fixed it already and it still reapears...

Thank you for posting this information - i'm just in the middle of Horizon chain.

 

[Almond_Brown]

That doesn't make any more sense to me either. It's as if the empire who lost the planet would collectively pretend they were just hallucinating about the times when the planet was still part of the empire. And as if the empire who occupied it collectively pretended it always belonged to them.

Once "Occupied" the Planet no longer belongs to the Empire that lost it. It inhabitants are basically in a Gulag of Ethics Transition and don;t likely give a shit about the rest of the "Empire" anymore but are focusing on more pressing matters, like perhaps being processed as alien "Food"

 

[Radene]

Once "Occupied" the Planet no longer belongs to the Empire that lost it. It inhabitants are basically in a Gulag of Ethics Transition and don;t likely give a shit about the rest of the "Empire" anymore but are focusing on more pressing matters, like perhaps being processed as alien "Food"

Doesn't mean the rest of the empire would ignore that. Random Alien A: "But my brother is there on that gulag-planet!"

 

[Held der Arbeit]

* 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

I'm sceptical about this. Arguably, wether you have aliens invading your planet should be a major factor in determining your war exhaustion, not a tiny factor (as previously) or even no factor at all. But while this seems weird from a logical standpoint, I will see how it works in gameplay terms

I SO hope that this will make 2.0 work...

 

[Ardith_Prime]

The Stellaris twitter told me to mention this here, Playing the games i've noticed the AI has a bad tendencies to spam the Marauder raids the nanosecond the cooldown ends, they did this repeatedly to a friend of mine. It seems if the AI can afford it it just immediately repays them to launch a raid.

 

[TForbes]

* 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.

I really hope that includes the initial leader... although i doubt it does. I always feel bad that the president that brought my empire onto the galactic stage just disappears into obscurity

 

[Hype]

Did I read that right, that occupying enemy planets and systems wont increase war exhaustion anymore?

Doesnt that kind of defeat the idea of raiding unprotected enemy space as the underdog to make him peace out faster?
Together with the (pretty extreme? Will have to play test) war exhaustion reduction and the removed Status quo, this sounds like you 100% gave up on the idea of smaller empires fighting back. I had no problems conquering everything my influence allowed me to claim before I ran out of war exhaustion on live. These changes sound like the new "underdog meta" is hide your fleet till its over and hope he doesnt have enough influence.
(Or am I missing a reason to try and stop him now?)

Yep, they pretty much did the exact opposite of what they should have in nearly every way with these changes. Removal of forced status quo, removal of WE from planets instead of increasing it and reducing reduction from fleets. I have no idea what they're trying to do here but it's not going to make war better, quite the opposite.

I know lots of people love the forced "status quo" peace, but in my recent game I had an inferior neighour I was trying to tributary. I didn't want their crappy planets, which would increase my tech/unity costs. They had a defence pact with a sprawling but equivalent overall and inferior fleet power empire the other side of them.

I rolled the tributary target, occupied all his worlds and systems. Still no where near accept demands. Started rolling his ally. ~10 systems and 5 planets in, I ran out of WE (despite having barely lost anything) and despite my +50 fleet power, zero systems lost, OH WELL LET'S JUST HAND EVERYTHING BACK AND END THE WAR.

That was very immersion breaking, and I think has finally lead me to give up on 2.0. I have put about 30 hours into trying to play this - completely different - game since the patch, but... it's just an exercise in tedium.

Another one! Forced status quo isn't the issue in your example war exhaustion accumulation rate and source is. That *does* need to be fixed, removal of forced status quo didn't. If you had only reached 50% WE at that point would you still be complaining?

 

[Stealthrider]

Awesome patch stuff

So far things seem great, though there's still the issue that being brought into a war led by someone else leaves you pretty powerless, just as it did in earlier versions. Sure you can compete for claims, but there's still no way to just peace out and let your ally deal with it himself. Particularly if the war is being led by an AI this is an issue, and with the new war exhaustion penalties I can see it becoming a major issue in certain situations.

Additionally, it makes little sense that a Federation needs to vote to go to war but there's no similar vote for ending a war. What I'd like to see is an option to start such a vote, perhaps with an additional mechanic for influencing the decision through spending Influence similar to democratic and oligarchic elections.

There's one more thing I'd like to see changed that isn't in the current patch. Claims need to expire after a period of time. In my current game I am bordered with an empire that is Pathetic to me and would be willing to join my Federation...if their opinion wasn't at -400 due to hundred-year-old claims on my systems. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with that extra negative opinion. If there was some diplomatic option for getting rid of claims it'd be better, but still having them expire would be a welcome change.

 

[Pringleman]

My first post so I'll start with some appreciation for the awesome game and fantastic continuous development. You guys are the best!

Looking at the patch notes, there are a lot of bug fixes! ("* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of additive " fixes a potential game breaker!). Maybe there should be a 2.02 for the bug fixes and 2.03 for the rolling beta?

Keep up the fantastic work, we all appreciate it!

 

[StonesD]

My take on the new outpost upkeep:

In 2.0, the developers didn't realize that they were wrongly calculating tradition penalties and making it grow exponentially as you expand instead of linearly. They fixed it while producing 2.0.2 and noticed that the balance with expansion is thrown way off, tall empires were now outclassed in every way by wide empires .
So now they are testing the balance with this beta patch by making traditions all-in-all be less hampered from expansion (Tradition unity cost per system reduced from 2% to 1%) and introducing a new energy cost to expansion.

What will this mean? I think that this will reduce wide empires' tech growth since you now have to prioritize power plants over research buildings on empty- and unneeded food tiles on planets, making your technology rate rely more on the system you expand to.

Also people, you have to remember: this is a Beta patch, things are very likely to change.

 

[Hype]

"* 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"

How does this work for Machine Empires which have no happiness ?

About the same as other empires. Just ignore it and have fun with forever wars. It's too bad that good war mechanics were so short lived in Stellaris only about a week or so.

So if I'm declared on and manage to turn the tide, I can then literally stay at war with my attacker forever with no penalties while they never gain influence or unity again? Is that how it works in the current build of the beta?

Yep, exactly like we said it would. It's almost like it's a reactionary change to complaints and it didn't need to happen in the first place.

With these War Exhaustion Changes, Total War CBs become really, really strong. Especially if you play a Gestalt Consciousness and dont have to deal with happyness. No reason to ever quit a war you are winning before you have gobbled up the entire enemy empire, even if its half the galaxy wide.

I really really hope that this gets reconsidered, because it utterly ruins the concept of War Exhaustion as a means to ensure single wars dont decide the fate of the whole game.

I'm so glad they fixed fun/interesting warfare with this boring BS.

 

[Nameless_Ensign]

If you've got close to 200 systems you should have plenty of space to slap down some extra power plants.

We are talking one or two extra habitats full of power plants to fuel your entire wide empire here. This is almost purely an early game change to slightly slow down expansion while you put up some power plants.

If only there wasn't a stacking unity/tech penalty for making more worlds to build power plants on, in addition to the penalties from outposts. Not to mention that, outside of Habitats, you might not have any suitable planets to build on, and forcing a player to get a specific Ascension perk no matter what their build is is kinda shitty.

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.

The only Empires that are effortlessly swimming in energy are Corporate Dominions, which are completely broken right now.