• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.

############################################################​

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

############################################################​



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.
 
  • 51Like
  • 11Love
  • 8
  • 4
Reactions:
You do realize that the problem with archaeotech is that most of the techs are useless and most of the techs that are not useless are too expensive to ever use?

This come from the idea that you need to use them on all ship you use , and usualy you use only 1 ship design and spam it.

i used them quite succesfull , i just had to limit myself to 1 fleet with those tech , because otherwise i could never afford to rebuild all the fleets in case of loses...
you know, actualy using ship design to make more than 6 designs .
 
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
You do realize that the problem with archaeotech is that most of the techs are useless and most of the techs that are not useless are too expensive to ever use?
Honestly, no single component should cost more than 2, maybe 3 minor artifacts.

Producing a fleet of 50 ships, each with 2 archeotech components at that cost each would still cost something like 200-300 minor artifacts.
 
Last edited:
  • 5Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Honestly, no single component should cost more than 2, maybe 3 minor artifacts.

Producing a fleet of 50 ships, each with 2 archeotech components at that cost each would still something like 200-300 minor artifacts.
A significant number of the different components are also currently awful. The worst is the kinetic weapon, which on average is beaten by T2 kinetic weapons regardless of AP because of lower accuracy.

I can work with "extremely scarce, make elite fleets" but right now it doesn't make elite fleets. It makes on average T3 fleets except for a couple standout options. I'd accept sidegrade T5.5 (that is, generally bit better than tier 5 but not linearly better, different modifiers/stats than a strict upgrade) but right now some of them I wouldn't build if they were literally free.
 
  • 7
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
  • Fixed a typo in the Cloud, Snagged event (federations3.2010)
Do you know if that event chain breaking if any member times out on the project was also fixed?

Always nice to see AI improvements!

  • Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
Ooh. Can anyone think of any flags or variables that would make this unsafe to use on released empires so that they inherit stuff from the empire they were part of?

  • You can now use "initializer = random" in the spawn_system effect
I'd be very very interested in hearing some more details about how this works!
  • Does this specifically choose from amongst initializers with usage = misc_system_init, or can it pull from other usages?
    • initializer = <usage/random_list> would be lovely to have, btw.
  • Does it take usage_odds into account?
    • If so, does it just ignore things like bottleneck and resource cluster requirements?
  • Does it take the spawn_chance/scaled_spawn_chance into account?
    • If so, does it respect the null spawn results from during galaxy generation, or does it roll again each time?
  • Can it spawn systems with a max limit that previously tried but failed to spawn?
On the topic of system spawning, some other modding functionality on my wishlist includes...
  • spawn_system: Ability to use parameters and/or dynamic variables for min/max_distance and min/max_orientation_angle
  • A trigger that checks how many remaining uses a given initializer has.
  • A trigger that checks if an initializer tried to spawn but failed usage.
  • Having unique flags set for the prescripted systems that don't have them yet, so you can check the galaxy to see if they've spawned. (Great Wound, Hauer, Yormak's system, Trappist, Hillos, Polaris, everything in unique_system_initializers.txt, trader and possibly other enclave systems, etc.)
    • Or alternatively, a trigger that directly checks if an initializer has been used and successfully spawned a system, so you don't need to scan each system for star flags.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
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.
Maybe it used to be, but from the data I have our OOS rate is very very low.

Coop is also an optional feature, if it's unstable it can be avoided until fixed.

Also..why do you think we're doing an Open Beta? :D
 
Maybe it used to be, but from the data I have our OOS rate is very very low.

Coop is also an optional feature, if it's unstable it can be avoided until fixed.

Also..why do you think we're doing an Open Beta? :D
Also..why do you think we're doing an Open Beta? :D

Because you like receiving angry messages, passive-agressive feedback and endless bug reports?
 
  • 4Haha
Reactions:
So if Montu can be believed, the design intent is that we're not suppose to have a ton of ships running around with archaeotech weapons, This brings up two major issues:

First, the components are going to need to be better. If they are suppose to be no common, than they need to be better than what we normally field or there isn't much point in having them around. I'm perfectly fine with the idea of limiting what we have for certain things, if that's the best possible way to avoid a scenario where you end up with a bunch techs becoming obsolete. It's just that the rarer stuff has to justify being used or there is no point in bothering with it.

Second, the ship designer needs a major pass. The two biggest issues with it are that we can't put together a catalogue of pre-designed ships to use across games, provided we've unlocked all the components. I suspect a number of people don't bother with the ship designer because they get tired of having to redesign the same ships every game. The second issue with the ship designer is that the auto part is not build around the idea of letting players work with the apparent design here. If you aren't suppose to have masses of archaeotech weapon equipped ships, then you need to be able to build ships without those. Problem is the auto ship designer doesn't play at all with the idea that the player might want different designs for each hull type at the same time, it insists on only one design per hull type.

Both of those aspects are going to have to change for this design approach to actual work. Sure you probably could get away with not giving us a means to save ship designs across games, but that really should happen so that the ship designer is more approachable. Again, ton of people probably just go with the less optimal auto designer because they get tired of the tedium of redesigning the same ships over and over again. Sure some players probably really like doing that every game, but I suspect must players would rather not.
 
  • 10
  • 1
Reactions:
Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for Sol system.
This is an awesome touch! But what about Saturn? It looks fairly featureless irl, while in Stellaris it has the default banded texture.

Also, is Mercury still a molten world or is it now barren?
Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
Does this also apply to the Prethoryn infestation mechanic?
 
  • 2
Reactions:
[UI] Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the platform's browser instead.
So, wait. Does this mean that if I accidentally click this button after the update comes out, it will open Chrome with my 100+ tabs? Welp, time to get a UI mod that gets rid of this button, then. (This also seems like a really bad decision for people who, like me, play in fullscreen instead of windowed mode. I know I've occasionally had issues when alt-tabbing in and out of fullscreen, so an in-game button that forces this to happen seems like a problem waiting to happen.)
 
  • 1
Reactions:
So, wait. Does this mean that if I accidentally click this button after the update comes out, it will open Chrome with my 100+ tabs? Welp, time to get a UI mod that gets rid of this button, then. (This also seems like a really bad decision for people who, like me, play in fullscreen instead of windowed mode. I know I've occasionally had issues when alt-tabbing in and out of fullscreen, so an in-game button that forces this to happen seems like a problem waiting to happen.)
Web browser engines and their associated infrastructure (javascript JIT etc.) typically fall out of date with respect to security vulnerabilities within a matter of weeks if they are not being actively serviced. From that standpoint, it's actually pretty scary to use any web browser engine in any app that isn't being (very) frequently patched to close whatever the latest browser/JS vulnerability of the day is.

(I don't have any particular insight as to why they made the change. But from a security standpoint, it seems like a good idea, as Stellaris definitely doesn't push out monthly (or even more frequent) patches...)
 
  • 2Like
  • 2
  • 2
Reactions:
Web browser engines and their associated infrastructure (javascript JIT etc.) typically fall out of date with respect to security vulnerabilities within a matter of weeks if they are not being actively serviced. From that standpoint, it's actually pretty scary to use any web browser engine in any app that isn't being (very) frequently patched to close whatever the latest browser/JS vulnerability of the day is.

(I don't have any particular insight as to why they made the change. But from a security standpoint, it seems like a good idea, as Stellaris definitely doesn't push out monthly (or even more frequent) patches...)
The only website the internal browser needs to access is the wiki, so couldn't they set up a mirror of the wiki that is only accessed by the game browser, which would be limited to that specific site? If the main wiki was set up so only admins from Paradox could upload images, and the mirror site scanned for potential exploits being carried over from the main wiki (or possibly just disabling javascript and ads in the internal browser), I think it would be ok.

At the very least, I hope that clicking the button for opening the wiki will not directly open the wiki in the OS's default browser, but would instead open a confirmation prompt that we want to start a browser outside of the game.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
So if Montu can be believed, the design intent is that we're not suppose to have a ton of ships running around with archaeotech weapons, This brings up two major issues:

First, the components are going to need to be better. If they are suppose to be no common, than they need to be better than what we normally field or there isn't much point in having them around. I'm perfectly fine with the idea of limiting what we have for certain things, if that's the best possible way to avoid a scenario where you end up with a bunch techs becoming obsolete. It's just that the rarer stuff has to justify being used or there is no point in bothering with it.
I didn't actually play around with it yet but just from the sound of it that makes a lot of sense. It is also what I originally imagined archeotech weapons to be when I first read about it: Like unique weapons in Diablo - rare, powerful, expensive.
 
  • 1
Reactions: