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Stellaris Dev Diary #294 - 3.8 ‘Gemini’ Coop Open Beta Release Notes

Hello again!

Last week we went over the basic design of the Cooperative multiplayer system we’re currently working on, and we’re ready to announce that the Coop Open Beta is looking like it will be starting sometime next week. Though at this time I can’t give a precise date, I thought I’d provide a list of preliminary patch notes.

I expect that we’ll leave the branch up until the release of 3.8, and feedback will be collected in threads until April 30th. Stay tuned for more details once we can share them.

Release Notes​

Here’s a changelog of what will be present in the Coop Open Beta. This is only a small subset of what’s going to be coming in 3.8 - we wanted to keep the Coop changes relatively isolated in order to get better testing of the feature.

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############### VERSION - 3.8 COOP OPEN BETA #################​

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Features

  • Added two Cooperative modes, allowing up to five players per empire. More information can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #293.
    • Cooperative PvE can be initiated from the main menu - all players that hotjoin the hosted game will join the primary player’s empire. This mode is primarily intended for teaching new players or for lower intensity cooperative gameplay.
    • Cooperative PvP can be allowed by the host of a standard multiplayer game. When enabled, empires can open themselves up to allow other players to help control their empire. We expect this game mode to be useful for competitive team play.

Improvements

  • Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for Sol system.
  • Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
  • Added new anomaly The Orb
  • Added a special solar system protected by the Lone Defender.
  • Added a decision to clear the wreckage on a Broken Shackles starting planet in the event that they are conquered before they enact the Memorial to the Unshackled decision.
  • Improved accuracy of tooltips on the galaxy setting screen and implemented experimental nested tooltip functionality.
  • The mind-wiped species from On the Shoulders of Giants will now have the Forcefully Devolved trait.
  • The Observation Insight Situation now remembers what approach you had when it last finished.
  • There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.

Balance and Bugfixes

  • Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
  • A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
  • Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
  • Added missing "gateway" icons and tooltips to tech_cloaking_1 and tech_detection_array.
  • Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
  • Broken Shackles empires with the Parliamentary System civic will instead have Unshackled Politics fire one month after game start instead of one year after game start.
  • Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
  • Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
  • Fix MP game browser listing full games even if "Not full" is checked.
  • Fixed a typo in the Cloud, Snagged event (federations3.2010)
  • Fixed an issue with an unlocalized version of MSI in the initial interaction between a Broken Shackles and Payback empire.
  • Fixed an unlocalized string for the Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch.
  • Fixed events related to the Out of Warranty event chain not firing.
  • Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
  • Fixed Liberation wars not showing up for Payback empires.
  • Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
  • Fixed NO_POSSIBLE_OPTION text in tooltip for an option in Starbase sabotage event
  • Fixed reloading of system initializers and crash in with reload_galaxy console command
  • Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
  • Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
  • Fixing truncated build queue items in the starbase view
  • Former pre-FTL worlds will no longer display the technological age of the former civilization during colonization.
  • Increased size of the Relic World tied to the Moon Base arc site from 26 to 30.
  • Newly added starbase modules and buildings are now possible targets for Sabotage Starbase.
  • Prevent joining full MP games.
  • Removed a double be from a machine become the crisis event.
  • Solved exploit where a base price would constantly reset the next day if you sold the minimum amount
  • Special project energy cost is now displayed in situation log
  • System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
  • The "Direct Join" window now blocks other input.
  • The "Host server" window now blocks other input.
  • The Separatist Planet will no longer nuke themselves if you lose your capital to space fauna.
  • Torpedo and Frigate technology now requires you to have researched Corvettes.

AI

  • Fix for AI requiring wrong techs to build some megastructures
  • Prevent "Assist Research" from blocking AI construction of orbital rings
  • AI can take into account planetary impact of orbital ring buildings when picking which one to build
  • AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings
  • AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions
  • Allow AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation
  • Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades
  • The AI will now build more Offspring Outlooks and Cordyceptic Reanimation Facilities.

UI


  • [UI] Addition of new social assets. Update of the Text on tooltips
    [UI] Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
    [UI] Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the platform's browser instead.

Modding

  • Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
  • Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day [.].
  • Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
  • Removed support for the "Major" flag and potential trigger in events.
  • Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
  • Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
  • Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
  • You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect

Again - this isn’t everything that we’re planning for 3.8.

Things to Keep in Mind​

Coop touches a lot of systems in Stellaris, and it is very likely that you will run into synchronization issues, or other weirdness. (The dreaded “Out of Syncs” that are the bane of multiplayer Stellaris.) This system is still in active development, but we wanted to let people play with it now, while there’s still time to react to feedback and bugs that are found.

Certain events, such as diplomacy with enclaves or other special entities, may also behave oddly during the beta, with responses going to the first player in the empire rather than the one that initiated contact.

Miss last week's Dev Diary?​

Did you miss last week's Dev Diary introducing Coop? Community Manager Mordred Viking is on Stellaris Official on YouTube to save you the trouble of reading it!

StellARTis Competition Winners​

The StellARTis competition has completed, and winners have been announced! Check out some of their brilliant works.

Next Week​

Next week we’ll start going through some of the many changes coming in 3.8 that aren’t in the Coop Open Beta release.
 
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  • Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
That's a nice touch, but I am wondering if you would consider allowing Venus to be terraformed with the Detox trait, and adding in a unique map for it as well (there are plenty floating about showing the prospective Aphrodite and Ishtar continents),
 
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Excited to see the changes coming :) I'm slightly concerned about this one:

Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.

Currently the ship designer (auto design, auto update, and role) as well as starbases massively favour archaeotech components. This is a problem because it often favours them over better tier 4+ components and they are an order of magnitude more expensive than other strategic resource componets. I worry this one change on its own is going to exacerbate the problem by forcing players to manually design/update every ship. Otherwise we have fleets that get stuck reinforcing or updating due to minor artifact scarcity.
 
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Increased size of the Relic World tied to the Moon Base arc site from 26 to 30.
I always liked the extra-dimensional district this added, can we get it to 31 when we open the
Miniature Galaxy?

Since this Beta is about adding the option for Primitive players to enjoy and learn the game in smaller increments are there any plans to help Uplift these newcomers with the option of some "Team" starts for things like Hegemony or even UNE/CoM to bridge them into a fuller experience? Even a Galaxy setting for spawning next to each other would go a long way for some groups I imagine.
 
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"Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken."

I dunno about this one, I've seen plenty of complaints about the limited storage and now you're limiting it even more, and gating more storage behind an AP that most may not even take (a lot) is arguably even worse.
 
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  • Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.

I see this critical, as we currently have the issue with autoshipdesigner overly relying on equipping all ships with minor artifact components. This currently Forces the player to make the following decision: either never to allow autoresearch of technolögies (so no archtech compionents get researched) or to micromanage the shipdesigner. Otherwise they become unable to build ships in meaningful quanitties and basically lose the game should they lose their fleet in battle (it would take 100years to replace them at this minor artifact quanitities).
The AI doesnt even have this choice. For the AI it means having way smaller fleets and if those die - RIP the AI empire.

Lowering the base storage capacity in this situation only deepens the issue. However I have to admit - if ships are built with minor artifacts a playeer probably will never experience overflow issues past the early game.
 
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Excited to see the changes coming :) I'm slightly concerned about this one:



Currently the ship designer (auto design, auto update, and role) as well as starbases massively favour archaeotech components. This is a problem because it often favours them over better tier 4+ components and they are an order of magnitude more expensive than other strategic resource componets. I worry this one change on its own is going to exacerbate the problem by forcing players to manually design/update every ship. Otherwise we have fleets that get stuck reinforcing or updating due to minor artifact scarcity.

"Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 1,000 or by 3,000 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken."

I dunno about this one, I've seen plenty of complaints about the limited storage and now you're limiting it even more, and gating more storage behind an AP that most may not even take (a lot) is arguably even worse.

Unfortunately, a related change couldn't get into the beta build in time, but should be in the release version of 3.8:

[Balance] Auto-designed ships and those designed by the ship role button will now only equip archaeo-components if your empire has the Archaeo-Engineers AP.

For clarification - is this written as intended, or a typo?
(i.e. "a pre-ftl civilization" rather than "a pre-sapient species")

Not a typo!
 
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Unfortunately, a related change couldn't get into the beta build in time, but should be in the release version of 3.8:
[Balance] Auto-designed ships and those designed by the ship role button will now only equip archaeo-components if your empire has the Archaeo-Engineers AP.

Cheers for the clarification! Sounds like a good change.
 
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Excited to see the changes coming :) I'm slightly concerned about this one:



Currently the ship designer (auto design, auto update, and role) as well as starbases massively favour archaeotech components. This is a problem because it often favours them over better tier 4+ components and they are an order of magnitude more expensive than other strategic resource componets. I worry this one change on its own is going to exacerbate the problem by forcing players to manually design/update every ship. Otherwise we have fleets that get stuck reinforcing or updating due to minor artifact scarcity.
This one surprises me too. Late game, I can go from 3000 to nil very quickly when upgrading my fleet and defense stations. Might want to actually go the other way and make the *base* amount 3000.
 
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Do you have any plans about AI and habitats? AI builds too much of them in late game. This also extremely slow down game at late periods.
Maybe it is possible to add special settings to limit use of habitats in game rules? It can scale this way:
  • habitats are prohibited (does not spawn void dwellers empires with such start settings)
  • up to x0.5 habitats of empire planets
  • up to x1 habitats of empire planets
  • up to x2 habitats of empire planets
  • up to x5 habitats of empire planets
  • unlimited (like it works now in game, no restrictions for habitats).
 
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so no fixes for every atomic age pre ftl civ blowing itself up continuously. The last one I had couldn't make it between autosaves without blowing up negates any attempt to enlighten
 
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For clarification - is this written as intended, or a typo?
(i.e. "a pre-ftl civilization" rather than "a pre-sapient species")
I've seen a pre-sapient forcefully devolved species in 3.7.
 
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Stellaris MP is notorious for its "Out of Sync" and putting coop on top of it is like adding stories to a building whos foundations are already crumbling. Can't wait for inevitable metric ton of bugs and devs wasting time trying to fix them.
 
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Stellaris MP is notorious for its "Out of Sync" and putting coop on top of it is like adding stories to a building whos foundations are already crumbling. Can't wait for inevitable metric ton of bugs and devs wasting time trying to fix them.
A more positive way of looking at it is - fixing of multiplayer stuff will get more attention, bound to happen my friend :)
 
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I am not upset by the minor artifact storage change, but that change can not happen until the autodesigner stops assigning archeotech components to ships. This is vital, as archeotech weapons are ludicrously expensive.
 
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so no fixes for every atomic age pre ftl civ blowing itself up continuously. The last one I had couldn't make it between autosaves without blowing up negates any attempt to enlighten
It's not in the patchnotes but we did add a new option to the nuke event where you can interfere and stop it.
 
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