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Stellaris Dev Diary #304 - 3.8.4 Released, What’s Next?

Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

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

#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################​

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


Balance

  • Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  • Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  • Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  • The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  • Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  • Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  • The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  • The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  • Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

AI

  • Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  • Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

  • Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  • Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  • Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  • Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  • Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  • Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  • Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  • Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  • Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  • Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  • Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  • Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  • Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  • Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  • Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  • Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  • Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  • Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  • Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  • Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  • Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  • Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  • Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

  • Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  • Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  • Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

UI

  • Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  • Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  • Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  • If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  • Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  • Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

  • Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  • Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  • Made reload_gui console command more stable

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​


A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

Habitats and You​


A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Stellaris with a Twist​

Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.

faction goals ep2.png

If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

Free to Play Weekend​

But wait, there's more!

pre announjce.png

What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play, there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord, from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!
 
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we really need some weapon updates.. event weapons are trash and need some unique traits too them, some of the archeo techs are either OP or trash for the price and hull mods could use some buffs maybe add hull hardeners ...
i have a link to a thread with lots of good ideas for the event weapons attached with some weapon tier lists that are great from youtube vids.. so sick of energy siphon being so useless i never research it .. and starbases need to be customisable too ..
 
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I'm just going to throw this out there since it's been on my mind in my past few games: Stellaris is a sci-fi game, but it touches heavily on certain other forms of progression such as psionics, spiritualism, diplomacy, trade, etc... but it can't escape it's slavish adherence to science as a playstyle. While it's not fair to say "he who has the most science wins," it is fair to say that *all* Empires pursue it with the same zeal: three science choices, always in motion.

Compare this to something like the Galactic Council that is only in session at certain points, or espionage which isn't always about active manipulation and you can see how Science is one of the oldest, and kind of out of place, aspects of the game. I don't think the random draw has ever worked super well, but ultimately it's the one thing that causes all Empires to feel the same: they all converge technologically into the same points. This has been discussed ad nauseum, but with the recent reduction in the number of *scientists* governing techs, and given Stellaris' long history of overhauling old systems in favor of more interesting and dynamic ones... well, it feels like science needs some reevaluation. We can argue some players accrue technology faster or slower, but ultimately they all accrue the same technology.

It limits a lot of interesting diplomacy, trade and espionage. I'd like to see something along these lines show up in the summer experimentation.
 
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techs more strongly tied too ethic/government choices and weapons commitment giving you more specialised options so sticking to energy weapons gets u better bonuses and tiers etc if you stick to that research path kinda like how the psionic coven is chosen... then your playthroughs would certainly take on more unique techs each time instead always same techs
 
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I hope diplomacy includes the Galactic Imperium. Its such a great concept but theres a lot of improvements I think will make it even better of a RP mechanic:

  • more imperial holdings, I think theres just one and just for megacorp imperium;
  • buff the imperial legions and add a navy equivalent;
  • make all members of the GC turn into vassals of the Emperor (a special type of vassal) and/or make everyone part of an unique "imperial federation" (which is not really a federation, of course);
  • some way for the Emperor to change borders within the Imperium (like forcing A to cede systems to B, etc);
  • add some twists on the Emperor based on its ethics, instead of just putting authoritarian on the top (i agree with the authoritarian stuff, btw, because a non-authoritarian will not want to make the Imperium on first place, but I think the empire original ethics should add something too).
 
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what else would you like to to see in game ?
1. technology for ground units
2. custom ground units
3. create custom Ships designs like your able to do in Galactic Civilization 4 and or Distance worlds where build ships to look like anything we want.
4. Bombing Technology and Virus technology's for viral warfare
5. ability to start every one in galaxy as a PRE FTL including yourself.
6 Bigger galaxy maps maybe even multiple galaxy maps in single game.
 
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I have an idea to throw out there because the talk of summer experiments, figured it be kind of fun to toss things around.

What if Feudal Society was reworked with more diplomacy?

I feel the whole removal the element of divided patronage mechanic makes the civic kind of boring to play with. Just makes vassal play a tad to strong initially. It feels more like a reward at the end of a federation perk tree then a civic. Thought how would this be more like a Feudal Society, what if the civic works more like mixture between federation play and the vassal system. Say each sector of your empire becomes its own mini empire and a special federation is formed. From refence material, I see it sort of like the Landsraad from the Dune series in how its frame, each vassal as a house. For balance purposes, I would say no independent empires can join it, and the player cannot join other federations even if they are a single sector empire.

The gameplay of it is more akin of getting houses to align with what you want to do. Say if you want to go to war, you would have to do deals with the houses to garner support for a aggressive war or for external diplomatic negations. Trading for favors and things of that nature as the support, the aim is to get the player interact more with the vassals/houses of their empire. The perks of the federation could be lowering the divided patronage modifier till you get that max level federation and your reward for keeping your empire in order is the elimination of divided patronage mechanic, and the centralization of your authority as emperor/empress of your empire.
 
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Remove leader cap.

(sarcasm) Either that or remove the leader slots entirely for planets, science vessels, armies and whatnot because that wouldn't make leader game aspect worse than it is now. Heck, why just stop there? Just remove leaders entirely the game, because why should I bother micromanaging 7 individuals if I need to rule a galactic empire.(/sarcasm)

The new leader system is step back and I hope this has been realized by the devs.
 
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Is it possible to chose a new pops portrait during synth ascension when transferring to the pops to synth bodies? I didn't see an option for this. If it's not, then I propose this feature, because I don't want to be stuck in ever different game with the same default robot look.
 
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Is it possible to chose a new pops portrait during synth ascension when transferring to the pops to synth bodies? I didn't see an option for this. If it's not, then I propose this feature, because I don't want to be stuck in ever different game with the same default robot look.
Agree very much. I have a favourite robot look and it’s annoying to have to change it afterwards. Also would be nice to select starting traits.
 
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1. technology for ground units
2. custom ground units
3. create custom Ships designs like your able to do in Galactic Civilization 4 and or Distance worlds where build ships to look like anything we want.
4. Bombing Technology and Virus technology's for viral warfare
5. ability to start every one in galaxy as a PRE FTL including yourself.
6 Bigger galaxy maps maybe even multiple galaxy maps in single game.
Count me in for #3. Can't speak for GC4 but the ship builders in GC3 and GC2 are so much better. It aggravates me not being able to mix and match modules like I want. Many of the ship sections have component slot combinations that make no sense. Like why have PD sections with three slots but only one is actually a PD slot?? Why do PD components need to HAVE a special slot in the first place? This lack of flexibility is really baffling.
 
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Like why have PD sections with three slots but only one is actually a PD slot?? Why do PD components need to HAVE a special slot in the first place? This lack of flexibility is really baffling.

It's always struck me as a bit odd that PD is a weapon slot and not a defensive slot that competes with shields and armour.
 
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The update will be called "Caelum". Please chisel us some new Human clothes :cool:. The newer portraits look good, but not the outfits - they look bland, unfortunately.

Maybe some inspired by the ruler of the Overlord trailer and the citizen of the MegaCorp trailer...
 
One thing I would LOVE is the ability to remap the keys for the left pane, F1-F10 is so cumbersome to use when I could use stuff like Shift+E or Shift+R.

Either by opening it up to modding again or adding an ingame menu like in Vic3.
 
Like why have PD sections with three slots but only one is actually a PD slot?? Why do PD components need to HAVE a special slot in the first place? This lack of flexibility is really baffling.
In the past I've experimented with mods (from others and self-made) that removed some or all of the limitations on slots other than size. These generally worked OK for me as a solo player, but the AI generally did not handle things as well, sometimes hilariously badly. I suspect that prior to having Ship Roles, the AI simply wasn't able to focus its shipbuilding without being given very simplistic and limited options.

Now that we have Ship Roles, I'd like to hope that they can be used to give the AI the direction it needs to let players have more freedom in ship design. Hopefully someone will have the time to do some testing and see exactly how they work with expanded ship design options beyond those the game provides by default.

I'd also like to see AI empires have more of a themed feel; beam-heavy, missile-and-PD heavy, fighter-heavy, etc. and the roles might be a means to a step in the right direction.
 
I support overhauling internal dynamics and diplomacy. The different species of your empire should bicker and ally and fight and politick a lot more than they currently do, and for much of the game I simply don't care about other empires unless I'm at war with them.
 
Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

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

#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################​

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


Balance

  • Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  • Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  • Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  • The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  • Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  • Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  • The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  • The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  • Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

AI

  • Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  • Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

  • Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  • Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  • Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  • Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  • Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  • Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  • Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  • Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  • Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  • Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  • Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  • Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  • Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  • Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  • Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  • Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  • Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  • Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  • Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  • Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  • Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  • Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  • Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

  • Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  • Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  • Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

UI

  • Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  • Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  • Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  • If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  • Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  • Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

  • Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  • Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  • Made reload_gui console command more stable

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​


A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

Habitats and You​


A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Stellaris with a Twist​

Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.

If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

Free to Play Weekend​

But wait, there's more!

What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play, there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord, from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!

Hello everyone!

The ‘Gemini’ 3.8.4 update has been released today. In it, we’ve continued post-release balance work. Some of the bigger changes in the release include the conversion of several leader traits into Council Traits either to reduce micromanagement (moving a governor from planet to planet to maximize benefits of some traits) or to address undesired stacking issues.

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

#################### VERSION 3.8.4 ######################​

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


Balance

  • Rebalanced a number of leader traits: Some general and governor traits that previously encouraged moving leaders from planet to planet have been made council traits or had their modifiers changed to discourage this. Resource production traits now require the leader to have at least level 2 to gain the first tier.
  • Empire Size now has a floor of 50, and thus can no longer go negative.
  • Increased the bombardment effectiveness of large fleets.
  • The base rate at which Raiding bombardment steals pops has been dramatically reduced. Each army present on a planet will also protect 2 pops from being vulnerable to Raiding bombardment. (Raiding bombardment is always unable to steal the last pop of a colony)
  • Renormalised political power from living standards and reduced base faction unity gain to better fit intended unity production. The Shared Burdens civic no longer grants an increase to the base unity of the Egalitarian faction, as the benefit is now rolled into their living standards.
  • Sequential End-Game Crises now get +2 strength multipliers instead of +1.5.
  • The Khan now has terrifying admiral traits.
  • The opinion modifier from Defender of the Galaxy now only affects normal, non-fallen/awakened, empires that are capable of independent diplomacy.
  • Colonists now increase planetary build speed by 10% instead of creating defensive armies.

AI

  • Fixed AI hiring a governor without having a planet to assign them to.
  • Fixed AI hiring scientists without having science ships to assign them to.

Bugfixes

  • Broken Shackles Origin event "Homesick" no longer casts affected Pops into the void
  • Adjusted width of MP lobby chat entries so that they don't overlap the scroll bar.
  • Council Agenda Costs now benefit from Empire Size Effect modifiers.
  • Cyborg general trait will now add +2 combat width, as stated in the tooltip
  • Empires with the Under One Ruler origin no longer ignore the initial 20 year cooldown on government reform.
  • Federation project Flocks of Cloud should no longer get stuck ad infinitum in the situation log
  • Fixed an error in which you may have been prevented from using Operation Crisis Beacon again - beyond the intended 4-year lockout period - if said Operation was aborted after confirming its target.
  • Fixed duplicate tradition names in French
  • Fixed Imperial Heirs not having a starting leader trait.
  • Fixed queued move orders from a system with an FTL inhibitor not being displayed correctly.
  • Fixed randomly generated empires having DLC-locked civics.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having DLC-locked traits.
  • Fixed randomly generated species having invalid trait and climate preference combinations.
  • Fixed randomly generated species not having enough traits if it has traits (such as Aquatic) that are required by something else.
  • Fixed the bonus leader trait from Aptitude Traditions not applying to Imperial Heirs.
  • Fixed tooltip for Beacon of Liberty and Fanatic Purifiers, now they do mention that they are incompatible with Crusader Spirit
  • Imperial Heirs are excluded from the effects of The Orb.
  • Imperial Heirs that are generals or admirals in empires with Distinguished Admiralty now benefit from the +2 starting level.
  • Invalid civics will get removed when authority is changed through event for Under One Rule
  • Leaders excluded from the upkeep cost now correctly produce resources
  • Pharma State civic is now correctly blocked by Payback and Broken Shackles.
  • Removed DLC lock on some faction demands that were introduced in 3.8
  • Set the AI weight for reorganizing the council to 0.
  • Void Dweller MegaCorps with the Pharma State civic now correctly replace their starting Holo-Theaters with a Gene Clinic, unless they also have Permanent Employment (in which case it is replaced with the Employment Center).
  • Warform no longer has the synth trait and has the second tier of the skirmisher trait.

Improvements

  • Imperial Heirs are now up to 10 years younger than regular leaders of the same species. Starting Imperial Rulers are now up to 15 years older than regular leaders of the same species.
  • Imperial Heirs that benefit from bonus starting levels now have selectable traits for those levels for owners of Galactic Paragons.
  • Imperial Rulers and Heirs now have a 5% chance to start with a negative trait and an additional positive trait. The Philosopher King civic negates this.

UI

  • Fixed leader portrait clipping in the level up window.
  • Fixed position of Speech To Text button in the MP lobby.
  • Fixed width of MP lobby chat text for large fonts and text to speech.
  • If a player in your coop group adds a leader trait while you have the level up window open and there are no more traits to add, it will show the last selection.
  • Reworked the planet occupation icon frame
  • Selecting a ship by clicking it will now ignore its bounding box if it has a collision mesh.

Modding

  • Empire size string now uses the actual defines instead of localized numbers for its message.
  • Made it possible to set what leader portrait container to use for each location of the new portraits
  • Made reload_gui console command more stable

More changes to leader traits and some of the mechanics surrounding them will be coming in 3.9 in the fall. We’re placing some of the ideas and suggestions we’ve received into our “Summer Experimentation” bucket and we’ll see which ones pan out.

At this point we feel that 3.8 Gemini is in a stable state, and barring the need for a 3.8.5 hotfix, the next planned release will be 3.9 Caelum. (Caelum, “the Chisel”, represents a sculptor’s tools. Perfect for a balancing and polish update.)

Living Standards, Political Power and Unity Generation​


A pass has been done on living standard political power and unity generation to normalize them when compared with one another - living standards like Shared Burdens and Utopian Abundance were not generating enough, while Academic Privilege was previously the “champion of Unity” - a little odd for the Materialist living standard.

After these changes, Utopian Abundance should be at the top of the charts, followed by Shared Burdens. (Which no longer needs the “double Unity from the Egalitarian faction” crutch.)

These changes have gone live in today’s update.

Habitats and You​


A few people [ed: a few?!?] have discussed the tendency of late game systems to become flooded with extreme numbers of habitats. We have some ideas on different ways to curb this behavior while still ensuring that habitats are thematic and effective, especially in the hands of Void Dwellers.

I’ll have a broader feedback discussion later on during the summer where we present some of our ideas, discuss how experiments with them went, and collect additional feedback from the community.

Stellaris with a Twist​

Stellaris with a Twist is our streaming event, where Ep3o and AlphaYangDelete play co-op multiplayer, and try to accomplish goals suggested and chosen by the Community.

If you have a suggestion for the final stream's goals, you can submit it here, and if you've missed part of this event you can get caught up here!

The last session of Stellaris with a Twist is next week, at 1500 CEST! Don't miss the exciting conclusion and find out which of our streamers will accomplish their Community-Suggested Goals for the Stream!

Free to Play Weekend​

But wait, there's more!

What's better than having a galaxy full of wonder to explore? Conquering that galaxy with a friend, obviously!

From June 22nd to June 26th, Stellaris will be Free to Play, there will never be a better time to introduce a friend to Stellaris -- and with the addition of co-op, you can now work together to conquer liberate the galaxy like never before.

In Stellaris multiplayer, the host's DLC is shared between all the players in the game -- the same holds true for co-op, even if one of the players is playing for free. So grab a friend, your planet cracker, and be sure to play during the Free to Play weekend! Thinking of trying Stellaris for the first time during the Free to Play, but don't know where to start? Join us on Discord, from the 22nd to the 26th, our Player Helpers will be running "Learn to Play" Stellaris sessions!

That's it for this week, see you next week!
New relics, new weapons, new middle and end crisis, please!!!!
 
Please do something about star bases.

1 Don't let them have shields in systems where shields are useless.
2 Let them have PD as a weapon option - (no change to protection range but gives 2 PD slots).
3 No more packing them full of archeotech.
4 add an extra slot to allow for the expanded options from archeotech/cloaking
/or raise the starbase cap by 1 when cloaking detection is discovered.
 
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Please do something about star bases.

1 Don't let them have shields in systems where shields are useless.
Excellent idea!

3 No more packing them full of archeotech.
Agreed.

4 add an extra slot to allow for the expanded options from archeotech/cloaking
/or raise the starbase cap by 1 when cloaking detection is discovered.
Disagree with this. It makes the game easier which I don't want to see.

Opportunity cost makes the game better.