Hi everyone!
This week we’ll be going over changes to Humanoids, Necroids, and more. We’ll also look at how habitats have changed over the past few weeks, and when you’ll get to play with them and give us direct feedback. (Spoiler: Now.)
First, I want to make a correction to the infographic we posted in Dev Diary #308 - due to a misunderstanding, I had the “lava” and “geode” humanoid lithoids listed as two separate portraits in the infographic, but they’re going to be variants of the same portrait. I apologize for the error.
Check out the video version of this Dev Diary on YouTube!
Now Iggy will talk about one of the things Humanoids do best... Bickering.
The Humanoid Species Pack did receive some nice improvements back in 3.1 “Lem” but it still lacked something. So we have returned once again to give it another pass!
For the Humanoid Species Pack we wanted to make something new, Species Packs have had traits, ascension perks, civics, and origins. Here we are now introducing the first ever Species Pack tradition tree!
The Enmity tree is not restricted to the Humanoid Species Class.
The Enmity Tradition tree is all about rivals and making the most of having them. The adoption and finisher bonus allows you to rival even more people than normal to extract as many bonuses as possible.
So many people to bear grudges against.
Some of the traditions will reward you for maintaining loads of rivals such as Rise to the Occasion.
Good news! We found a xenophobe, now we can afford to employ another scientist!
While the right side of the tree will be helping you compete against your Rivals
Rivaling stronger empires is always a good idea.
When you grab the tradition tree you also get access to a powerful agenda if you own Galactic Paragons. Since this Agenda is of a more tactical nature it will finish twice as fast as other tradition based agendas.
Give us war and nothing more!
And as a nice finish you get access to a new diplomatic stance granting you further benefits for rivaling the galaxy.
You get a rivalry and you get a rivalry!
♫Dumb ways to die…♬
Those Unbidden are not the right mood!
The faster you kill them the faster they grow!
Finally for the players that really wanna try their luck (or just bully the servile species) there is now Jinxed!
The Tzynn saw a black cat cross the street, but didn’t understand the significance.
Unlike Lithoids and Plantoids, where we wanted to add a more human-like variant of the phenotypes, the Humanoids pack was already full of… well… Humanoids.
So we decided to make two more to add more variety to the available portraits.
Dimorphism in this species is mostly in skin patterns and hair.
The second is a different take on “badass space elves”.
The only one left out of the fun were machines.
Enter the Mechromancy Ascension Perk.
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
Mechromancy has no prerequisites, so can be taken as a Machine Intelligence’s very first Ascension Perk.
Totally not placeholder artwork.
They can reanimate certain leviathans, and purged organic pops may be raised as cyborg zombies. Driven Assimilators treat these cyborg zombies as if they were assimilated for the purposes of pursuing Cybernetic Ascension.
Traders, willing to buy and sell anything on the Galactic Market.
Traders replace Merchants from most sources and are also granted in place of Clerks for some buildings. These specialist strata jobs have an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods and produce 8 Trade Value (plus some Amenities if you have the Commercial Enterprise Tradition).
Numistic Priests replace the Merchant and Priest jobs provided by the Numistic Shrine. These specialist strata jobs have an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods and produce 6 Trade Value, 2 Unity and 2 Amenities. However, for the purposes of any bonuses provided to jobs, they count as both Traders and Priests.
Trade leads to Prophets, Prophets lead to Profits!
The humble Clerk job has been rebalanced and now produces 3 Trade Value and 3 Amenities instead of 4 Trade Value and 2 Amenities. Taking the Trickle Up Economics Tradition increases their output to 4 Trade Value and 4 Amenities, but no longer grants additional Clerk jobs.
Collective Corporate Cooperation Creates Credits
For most of the game a Worker Cooperative empire should be entirely without the Ruler-strata as they replace their Executives and Managers with Stewards.
No rulers here!
Stewards replace both Executives and Managers
As these unique jobs provide Unity and small amounts of both Trade Value and Amenities, they’re fairly useful to have even on worlds that aren’t dedicated to Unity production.
Profits to the people!
The Employee Ownership Living Standard is much like Shared Burdens by sharing Political Power equally across the Strata, however instead of providing increased Happiness and faster Pop Demotion Time, it gives pops the same Trade Value production as Utopian Abundance and is further improved by a Tradition swap for the civic.
Meanwhile, the Mutual Aid trade policy allows your empire to reinvest their profits back into the upkeep for your pops. This allows some fairly powerful early game expansion if you’re running a Trade-focused build.
Eladrin immediately took this civic and twisted it into a Void Dweller Relentless Industrialist dystopia, screaming that “the invisible hand of the free market will handle the externalities”, so your utopian mileage may vary.
Based on feedback we received (primarily from newer players), we’ve removed dedicated automation stockpiles from the game. Planetary automation will simply use resources from your empire stockpiles, removing one unintuitive step from the process as well as getting rid of some weird and unintended resource conversion quirks.
The automation settings panel now lets you restrict certain resources from use by the automation system, so you can do things like forbid the use of Rare Crystals if you have important plans for those.
Following on from Eladrin’s directive to simplify my Habitat Prototypes and the feedback we’ve received, I’ve continued iteration on our planned rework for Habitats.
So what’s changed from 3.8…
Habitats as a Megastructure and Colony/Planet are limited to one per system in the form of a Habitat Central Complex megastructure which when built spawns a colonisable habitat and Major Orbital.
Once this has been constructed, additional Major Orbitals can be constructed around planets in the system and Minor Orbitals can be constructed around asteroids and moons in the system.
The megastructure build menu listing the options for Habitats
Detailed tooltips showing the requirements and effects of Habitat Megastructures.
When constructed, a Habitat Central Complex starts as size 6, and Habitation and Industrial Districts being uncapped. Research, Energy and Mining Districts are however limited to 3 × the number of deposits in the system that have an Orbital. Habitation Districts have also been changed to now provide 6 Housing, 2 Clerk/Maintenance Drone Jobs and +0.50 Building Slots.
If an Orbital is constructed around a planet, moon or asteroid with an Exotic Gas, Rare Crystal or Volatile Motes deposit, the deposit will automatically provide the jobs to collect the resources, without needing to construct a resource extraction building, as long as you have researched the relevant technology. While Orbitals constructed around Alloy, Zro, Dark Matter or other such deposits will automatically provide the resources as Habitats currently do.
As Orbitals are treated much like Mining/Research Stations in the system, they can be attacked by hostile forces but will be disabled when they hit 5% Hull Points (though crisis factions will instead outright destroy the Orbitals). When an Orbital is disabled, the Habitat Central Complex will gain 10% Devastation and a blocker depending on the type of Orbital.
Venting atmosphere into space is in breach of several GalCom ordinances!
The penalty to Max Districts scales with the level of the Habitat.
Habitat Complexes can be upgraded through Planetary Decisions much like previously, except instead of increasing the Planet Size, the upgrades will now increase the Habitability (which is useful since Habitats now start at 40% Habitability) and boost the District and Building Slots provided by Orbitals.
Habitat Technologies
Habitat Complex Upgrade Decisions
The effects and modifiers for both Void Dweller Origin and Voidborne AP have been reworked to take these changes into account, allowing for Void Dwellers to inherit most of the effects of the Voidborne AP.
Effects and Modifiers for Void Dwellers
Effects for the Voidborne AP
The initial Habitat Complex of a Void Dweller empire.
The same Habitat Complex after constructing all available Orbitals and fully upgrading it.
While updating the Void Dweller starting conditions, we ran into an old bug - Void Dwellers with the Sol system would spawn the guaranteed habitable worlds if that setting was enabled, though the planets would be of a random planet class, but those with the Trinary Void Dweller system would not spawn these systems. To fix this, we’ve updated both starting systems for Void Dwellers so that the first world is replaced with a frozen planet with a research deposit and a large number of research deposits scattered throughout the system while the second world is replaced with a molten world with an alloy deposit and a large number of mineral and energy deposits scattered throughout the system. This means that with the guaranteed habitable worlds setting, Void Dwellers are instead guaranteed a number of resource rich systems designed for setting up habitat complexes.
The beta includes early access to all of 3.9.0. Here are some preliminary Patch Notes:
Features
Improvements
UI
Balance
AI
Performance
Bugfix
Modding
We’ve set up a feedback form here to consolidate your comments and suggestions.
This week we’ll be going over changes to Humanoids, Necroids, and more. We’ll also look at how habitats have changed over the past few weeks, and when you’ll get to play with them and give us direct feedback. (Spoiler: Now.)
First, I want to make a correction to the infographic we posted in Dev Diary #308 - due to a misunderstanding, I had the “lava” and “geode” humanoid lithoids listed as two separate portraits in the infographic, but they’re going to be variants of the same portrait. I apologize for the error.
Now Iggy will talk about one of the things Humanoids do best... Bickering.
Hostility Rising
Heyo, Iggy here!The Humanoid Species Pack did receive some nice improvements back in 3.1 “Lem” but it still lacked something. So we have returned once again to give it another pass!
For the Humanoid Species Pack we wanted to make something new, Species Packs have had traits, ascension perks, civics, and origins. Here we are now introducing the first ever Species Pack tradition tree!
The Enmity tree is not restricted to the Humanoid Species Class.
The Enmity Tradition tree is all about rivals and making the most of having them. The adoption and finisher bonus allows you to rival even more people than normal to extract as many bonuses as possible.
So many people to bear grudges against.
Some of the traditions will reward you for maintaining loads of rivals such as Rise to the Occasion.
Good news! We found a xenophobe, now we can afford to employ another scientist!
While the right side of the tree will be helping you compete against your Rivals
Rivaling stronger empires is always a good idea.
When you grab the tradition tree you also get access to a powerful agenda if you own Galactic Paragons. Since this Agenda is of a more tactical nature it will finish twice as fast as other tradition based agendas.
Give us war and nothing more!
And as a nice finish you get access to a new diplomatic stance granting you further benefits for rivaling the galaxy.
You get a rivalry and you get a rivalry!
♫Dumb ways to die…♬
So Negative!
Another thing we haven’t done in a while is add more Negative Traits, the Humanoid Species Pack will now give you two! As well as a new fun positive one as well. First up we have Psychological Infertility, which can be taken with a lot of the positive pop growth traits in the game, as well as its mirror, Existential Iteroparity.
Those Unbidden are not the right mood!
The faster you kill them the faster they grow!
Finally for the players that really wanna try their luck (or just bully the servile species) there is now Jinxed!
The Tzynn saw a black cat cross the street, but didn’t understand the significance.
Reinforcements Have Arrived
We also have two new portraits coming to the Humanoids pack.Unlike Lithoids and Plantoids, where we wanted to add a more human-like variant of the phenotypes, the Humanoids pack was already full of… well… Humanoids.
So we decided to make two more to add more variety to the available portraits.
Dimorphism in this species is mostly in skin patterns and hair.
The second is a different take on “badass space elves”.
Mechromancy
The Necroids Species Pack has already received a large number of improvements. Reanimated Armies, in particular, changed from being a very niche civic into a much more interesting one as Reanimators, and then was expanded to include Megacorps and Hives with Permanent Employment and Cordyceptic Drones.The only one left out of the fun were machines.
Enter the Mechromancy Ascension Perk.
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
Mechromancy has no prerequisites, so can be taken as a Machine Intelligence’s very first Ascension Perk.
Totally not placeholder artwork.
They can reanimate certain leviathans, and purged organic pops may be raised as cyborg zombies. Driven Assimilators treat these cyborg zombies as if they were assimilated for the purposes of pursuing Cybernetic Ascension.
Trade Changes
One unintended consequence of the sources of Trade Value throughout the game was that Trade-focused empires ended up having more Merchants than we intended. To curtail this, and reduce the number of Ruler-strata jobs in these empires, we’re introducing two new jobs to the game.
Traders, willing to buy and sell anything on the Galactic Market.
Traders replace Merchants from most sources and are also granted in place of Clerks for some buildings. These specialist strata jobs have an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods and produce 8 Trade Value (plus some Amenities if you have the Commercial Enterprise Tradition).
Numistic Priests replace the Merchant and Priest jobs provided by the Numistic Shrine. These specialist strata jobs have an upkeep of 2 Consumer Goods and produce 6 Trade Value, 2 Unity and 2 Amenities. However, for the purposes of any bonuses provided to jobs, they count as both Traders and Priests.
Trade leads to Prophets, Prophets lead to Profits!
The humble Clerk job has been rebalanced and now produces 3 Trade Value and 3 Amenities instead of 4 Trade Value and 2 Amenities. Taking the Trickle Up Economics Tradition increases their output to 4 Trade Value and 4 Amenities, but no longer grants additional Clerk jobs.
Employee Ownership
A player fantasy that’s occasionally been requested from the community is the idea of a worker-led Corporate empire. After playing around the concept a bit (Should it be a new authority? An origin? A civic?), we decided on making a Worker Cooperative civic, without sharing too many features with Shared Burdens.
Collective Corporate Cooperation Creates Credits
For most of the game a Worker Cooperative empire should be entirely without the Ruler-strata as they replace their Executives and Managers with Stewards.
No rulers here!
Stewards replace both Executives and Managers
As these unique jobs provide Unity and small amounts of both Trade Value and Amenities, they’re fairly useful to have even on worlds that aren’t dedicated to Unity production.
Profits to the people!
The Employee Ownership Living Standard is much like Shared Burdens by sharing Political Power equally across the Strata, however instead of providing increased Happiness and faster Pop Demotion Time, it gives pops the same Trade Value production as Utopian Abundance and is further improved by a Tradition swap for the civic.
Meanwhile, the Mutual Aid trade policy allows your empire to reinvest their profits back into the upkeep for your pops. This allows some fairly powerful early game expansion if you’re running a Trade-focused build.
Eladrin immediately took this civic and twisted it into a Void Dweller Relentless Industrialist dystopia, screaming that “the invisible hand of the free market will handle the externalities”, so your utopian mileage may vary.
Automation Changes
More improvements are being made to planetary automation.Based on feedback we received (primarily from newer players), we’ve removed dedicated automation stockpiles from the game. Planetary automation will simply use resources from your empire stockpiles, removing one unintuitive step from the process as well as getting rid of some weird and unintended resource conversion quirks.
The automation settings panel now lets you restrict certain resources from use by the automation system, so you can do things like forbid the use of Rare Crystals if you have important plans for those.
Habitats
The Habitat experiment described in Dev Diary #306 has continued, and it’s looking positive towards inclusion in the 3.9 ‘Caelum’ update.Following on from Eladrin’s directive to simplify my Habitat Prototypes and the feedback we’ve received, I’ve continued iteration on our planned rework for Habitats.
So what’s changed from 3.8…
Habitats as a Megastructure and Colony/Planet are limited to one per system in the form of a Habitat Central Complex megastructure which when built spawns a colonisable habitat and Major Orbital.
Once this has been constructed, additional Major Orbitals can be constructed around planets in the system and Minor Orbitals can be constructed around asteroids and moons in the system.
The megastructure build menu listing the options for Habitats
Detailed tooltips showing the requirements and effects of Habitat Megastructures.
When constructed, a Habitat Central Complex starts as size 6, and Habitation and Industrial Districts being uncapped. Research, Energy and Mining Districts are however limited to 3 × the number of deposits in the system that have an Orbital. Habitation Districts have also been changed to now provide 6 Housing, 2 Clerk/Maintenance Drone Jobs and +0.50 Building Slots.
If an Orbital is constructed around a planet, moon or asteroid with an Exotic Gas, Rare Crystal or Volatile Motes deposit, the deposit will automatically provide the jobs to collect the resources, without needing to construct a resource extraction building, as long as you have researched the relevant technology. While Orbitals constructed around Alloy, Zro, Dark Matter or other such deposits will automatically provide the resources as Habitats currently do.
As Orbitals are treated much like Mining/Research Stations in the system, they can be attacked by hostile forces but will be disabled when they hit 5% Hull Points (though crisis factions will instead outright destroy the Orbitals). When an Orbital is disabled, the Habitat Central Complex will gain 10% Devastation and a blocker depending on the type of Orbital.
Venting atmosphere into space is in breach of several GalCom ordinances!
The penalty to Max Districts scales with the level of the Habitat.
Habitat Complexes can be upgraded through Planetary Decisions much like previously, except instead of increasing the Planet Size, the upgrades will now increase the Habitability (which is useful since Habitats now start at 40% Habitability) and boost the District and Building Slots provided by Orbitals.
Habitat Technologies
Habitat Complex Upgrade Decisions
The effects and modifiers for both Void Dweller Origin and Voidborne AP have been reworked to take these changes into account, allowing for Void Dwellers to inherit most of the effects of the Voidborne AP.
Effects and Modifiers for Void Dwellers
Effects for the Voidborne AP
The initial Habitat Complex of a Void Dweller empire.
The same Habitat Complex after constructing all available Orbitals and fully upgrading it.
While updating the Void Dweller starting conditions, we ran into an old bug - Void Dwellers with the Sol system would spawn the guaranteed habitable worlds if that setting was enabled, though the planets would be of a random planet class, but those with the Trinary Void Dweller system would not spawn these systems. To fix this, we’ve updated both starting systems for Void Dwellers so that the first world is replaced with a frozen planet with a research deposit and a large number of research deposits scattered throughout the system while the second world is replaced with a molten world with an alloy deposit and a large number of mineral and energy deposits scattered throughout the system. This means that with the guaranteed habitable worlds setting, Void Dwellers are instead guaranteed a number of resource rich systems designed for setting up habitat complexes.
3.9 Habitats Open Beta
We’ve decided that an Open Beta would be a good opportunity to gather more hands-on feedback about the system.The beta includes early access to all of 3.9.0. Here are some preliminary Patch Notes:
3.9 Open Beta Changelog
Features
- Plantoids Species Pack
- Added the Fruitful Partnership origin for Fungoid and Plantoid species
- Added a new Invasive Species trait available for Fungoid and Plantoid species
- Added a new dryad inspired portrait
- Added the Blooms of Gaea prescripted empire
- The Idyllic Bloom civic has been buffed
- Phase 4 gaia seeders will now grant 3-5 pops the Gaia World Preference and Bloomed trait every 5 years as well as increasing the effects of this trait (and the Budding trait) by +50%.
- The Bloomed trait gives +10% resources from jobs, +10% pop growth speed, -10% amenities and -10% housing used when the pop is on a gaia world.
- Humanoid Species Pack
- Added the new Enmity tradition tree focused on making and maintaining rivalries
- Added three new species traits available to all Biological and Lithoid Species
- Positive: Existential Iteroparity
- Negative: Psychological Infertility
- Negative: Jinxed
- Added two new portraits
- Lithoid Species Pack
- Added a new Vacuum Proof Civic for Hive-Minds
- Added the Selective Kinship Civic for regular empires
- Added a new humanoid inspired portrait
- Added the Federated Theian Preservers prescripted empire to the Lithoid DLC
- Added a new Mechromancy Ascension Perk for Machine Empires
- Added a new Worker Cooperative Civic to the Megacorps DLC
- Added the new Kaleidoscope Midgame Situation in the Nemesis DLC
- Reworked Habitats
- Habitats are now limited to one Habitat Central Complex per system, and a number of Orbitals depending on the planets, moons and asteroids present.
- Major Orbitals are constructed around planets and provide additional district slots to the Habitat Central Complex in addition to modifiers depending on the deposits present.
- Minor Orbitals are constructed around moons and asteroids and only provide modifiers depending on the deposits present.
- Removed Leisure and Trade Districts from Habitats.
- Habitat Upgrade decisions increase the habitability of the habitat in addition to increasing district and building slots provided by orbitals. Their cost is modified by your habitat build cost modifier.
- Reworked the number of districts on habitats and the amount of jobs/housing they provide.
- Reworked Voidborne Ascension Perk
- Modifiers:
- Habitat Build Cost: -20%
- Building Slots from Non-Urban Habitat Districts: +0.25
- Jobs from Habitat Districts: +1
- Effects:
- Upgrading a Habitat Central Complex allows research of the next level of Habitat technology.
- Can construct advanced housing buildings on Habitats
- Cannot be taken by empires with the Void Dweller Origin.
- Modifiers:
- Reworked Void Dweller Origin
- Can now be taken by Hive-Minds
- Can build advanced housing buildings on habitats.
- Modifiers replaced with:
- Habitat Build Cost: -25%
- Building Slots per Non-Urban Habitat District: +0.25 (1 Building Slot for every 4 Districts)
- Jobs per Habitat District: +1
- Arcane Replicator Planetary Feature:
- Increased the alloys production to 20.
- Increased the consumer goods production to 10. No longer produces Consumer Goods for empires that don't use Consumer Goods.
- Species trait, no longer decreases pop growth speed.
- Cannot take the Voidborne AP.
- Pre-scripted ideal planets have been replaced with systems rich in resource deposits.
- Pre-scripted system 1 will have:
- The habitable world is replaced with a frozen world with a size 3 Engineering deposit
- Three planets, moons or asteroids with an 83% chance of a size 1 Physics, Society or Engineering deposit and a 17% chance of a size 2 Physics, Society or Engineering deposit each.
- These deposits are in addition to whatever else might be spawned by the game.
- If the Void Dweller (Sol) starting system is selected, this will be Alpha Centauri.
- Pre-scripted system 2 will have:
- The habitable world is replaced with a molten world with a size 3 Alloys and size 4 Minerals deposit.
- Three planets, moons or asteroids with a 83% chance of a size 1 Minerals or Energy deposit and a 17% chance of a size 2 Minerals or Energy deposit each.
- These deposits are in addition to whatever else might be spawned by the game.
- If the Void Dweller (Sol) starting system is selected, this will be Sirus.
- Pre-scripted system 1 will have:
- Tradition Swaps
- Adaptability Finisher now gives +50% resources from deposits on habitats that give raw resources
- Expansion Finisher now gives +1 Max District on Habitats
- Modular Superstructures now gives +1 Housing from Habitation Districts and +10% Max Districts on Habitats
- Habitats that are blown up by a colossus now leave behind a Ruined Habitat Megastructure, which can be repaired into a fully functional Habitat Central Complex.
- Reworked jobs that primarily produced trade and introduced the specialist strata Trader job.
- Trader jobs added producing 8 TV for 2 CG upkeep
- Clerks produce 3 TV and 3 Amenities (was 4 TV and 2 Amenities).
- Commercial Zones building now provides 1 Trader job and 2 Clerk jobs (was 3 Clerk jobs). Commercial Megaplex building now provides 2 Trader jobs and 4 Clerk jobs (was 6 Clerk jobs and 1 Merchant Job).
- Shattered Ring Trade Districts now provide 1 Trader job (was 1 Clerk). Ringword Trade Districts now provide 2 Trader jobs and 6 Clerk jobs (was 2 Merchants jobs and 6 Clerk jobs).
- Numistic Priest jobs added producing 8 TV, 2 Unity and 2 Amenities. Numistic Shrine now provides 4 Numisitic Priest jobs (was 2 Priests and 2 Merchants).
- Trickle Up Economics tradition now gives Clerks +1 Amenity and +1 TV production.
- Commercial Enterprise tradition now makes Traders give +2 Amenities and Commercial buildings and Trade Districts provide additional Trader jobs (was Commercial buildings and Trade districts provide additional Merchant jobs).
- Reduced the number of Merchant jobs from the Galactic Stock Exchange to 1 (was 2 Merchant jobs).
- Merchant Guilds Councilor now increases Trader output by 0.4 TV per level (was increases Clerk output by 0.4 TV per level).
- Added the new Myrmeku colony event chain.
- Added the First Contact event chain The Trial.
- The Colonization Vessel for Eager Explorers now has a unique ship model.
- Added new Node Culling (Hive-Mind) and Node Reformatting (Machine Intelligence) agendas.
- These agendas are unlocked by researching a Tier 2 Society (Statecraft) technology. Culling or Reformatting a Node removes the Node and replaces it with a fresh Node with different traits. The maximum skill of this new Node depends on the any modifiers to starting leader skill and the new "Restored Node Additional Skill" modifier.
- Added "Restored Node Additional Skill" increase the starting skill level of new Node generated by the Node Culling (Hive-Mind)/Node Reformatting (Machine Intelligence) agendas.
- Expanded Leaders from Enclaves
- Hiring a Shroudwalker Teacher now gives you a level 5 Governor instead of being able to enact a planetary decision.
- You can now hire a Master Salvager level 5 Scientist from the Salvager Enclave.
- The Governors you can hire from trader enclaves now have unique traits and are no longer immortal.
- Leaders hired from enclaves can now be appointed to unique Council Positions (Requires Galactic Paragons)
- Attacking an enclave from which you have hired a leader causes that leader to leave your empire, with additional consequences if they are on the council.
- Reduced the RNG required for pursuing an Ascension Path.
- Removed the tech requirements from the Engineered Evolution, Mind over Matter, The Flesh is Weak, Organo-Machine Interfacing, Synthetic Evolution and Synthetic Age Ascension Perks.
- These Ascension Perks can now be taken as your third AP instead of second.
- Taking these APs will now grant access to an Agenda which gives progress in technologies relevant to the Ascension Path. These Agendas are faster to enact and have reduced cooldown compared to most other Agendas. Additionally, the enactment time for the Mind over Matter Agenda depends on your empire ethics.
- The Teachers of the Shroud Origin grants access to the Mind over Matter Agenda.
- Under One Rule origin now has one more conclusion event, after ascension.
- Supremacists now allow xeno species on the council if they have Selective Kinship civic (but only from their species class)
- Environmentalist Empires with their Ranger Lodge built can now enact a decision to create additional natural blockers on their planets.
Improvements
- Automation Improvements
- Sector Automation is removed in favor of Planetary automation, which no longer require a defined resource stockpile.
- You can now forbid the planet automation to use specific resources.
- New Player Improvements
- Added new tutorial steps to help new players learn core concepts such as Toggling the Galactic Map and Unpausing.
- Civilian Difficulty now blocks Homicidal, Despoiling, Criminal Syndicate, and Assimilator Empires. It also reduces the Fanatic Xenophobe spawn rate by 80%. Finally it blocks homicidal event empires from spawning.
- Deficit and Rebellion Situations progress 90% slower on the Civilian Difficulty and 50% slower on Cadet Difficulty
- Added a location marker to the "First Colony" event, making it easier to find your new world.
- Improved Origin tooltips by making use of Nested Tooltips.
- Improved clarity and formatting of auto-generated Civic tooltips.
- L-Gate Insight and L-Gate Activation Technologies are now considered Dangerous.
- Lost Colony Origin is now playable by Gestalt empires (Hive Minds and Machines)
- Omega Theory technology is now considered Dangerous.
- The Common Ground and Hegemony origins can now be selected by gestalt empires that do not have any of the following civics, Devouring Swarm, Terravore, Determined Exterminator.
- The randomly generated federation members for the Common Ground origin can now also be machine intelligences or hive-minds.
- Decreased the frequency of hive-mind federation members. Increased the frequency of machine federation members if the player is a machine empire.
- Automatic designation for Rural, Mining, Energy and Farming designation now accounts for buildings that boost mineral, energy or food output.
- The tooltip for number of districts on the planet UI now lists the number of district slots used.
- Choosing the Consume Planet planetary decision as a terravore will now start a situation that will consume the entire planet, sparing you from clicking the button numerous times.
- The From Beyond Science Ship now uses components suitable for it's origins.
- Added an introductory event for Holy Worlds, found on the fringes of Fallen Empire territory.
- Added events for Scion empires surveying a Fallen Empire's Holy World for the first time.
- Added Habitat Central Complexes to the shipset preview in Empire Creation.
- Various triggers no longer check for the mining_habitat, energy_habitat or research_habitat flags, they instead check for modifier values.
- Habitat level in the outliner now ranges from I to X. Habitat level is increased by Upgrade Habitat decisions and determined by planet flags. Only levels I through to III are used in unmodded games.
- Constructing a Habitat Complex now triggers a Toast instead of an Event.
- Constructing an Orbital triggers a Toast.
- Adjusted the orbit angle of Europa to prevent objects in orbit from clipping into those in orbit of Io.
- Standardized highlighting color used on Tradition tooltips.
UI
- Added a popup message for when your Co-op group is disbanded
- Make the Empire Size tootltip total include the floor as well as an explanation when applicable
- Make the Advisor Window not hide the Outliner
- Ship component modifiers from Archaeoengineers are now included in the stats in the ship designer and ship design window.
- Right-clicking a starbase icon in the galaxy view now allows you to select fleet orders targeting that starbase.
- Custom ship designs can now be created even if Auto-generate designs is enabled.
- Fixed planet modifier icons not updating correctly when removing and adding a modifier at the same time.
- In fleet view related tooltips added X icon in front of unfulfilled conditions. Added green checkmark in front of condition that is positive.
- Fixed tooltip for edict checkboxes not appearing.
- Added a scrollbar for the list of selectable council positions.
Balance
- Edicts now have an activation cost equal to their monthly cost.
- Major changes have been made to the leader XP penalty for being over leader capacity. The curve has been adjusted to a nonlinear one that no longer reaches -100%.
- Leader Capacity in the top bar will now turn yellow until you are at double your base capacity, after which it will turn red.
- Buffed Catalytic Processing civics.
- Principal Catalyst (regular empire) council position effects: +2% Metallurgist output
- Chief Catalyst Officer (megacorp) council position effects: -5% Food Upkeep for Jobs.
- Chemist, Translucer and Gas Refiner jobs (and their gestalt equivalents) now have food upkeep for Catalytic empires. Mineral:Food ratio is kept at 2:3 much like Metallurgists:Catalytic Technicians, meaning that these jobs have an upkeep of 15 Food. Machine Intelligences with the Organic Reprocessing civic no longer have -1 to food production for Agri-Drones.
- Catalytic Technician, Chemist, Translucer and Gas Refiner jobs (and their gestalt equivalents) with Food upkeep have 1.25x the Base Output of the equivalent jobs with Mineral upkeep.
- Rebalanced Ruler strata jobs.
- Science Directors no longer produce Unity.
- High Priests produce additional Unity instead of additional Amenities compared to Politicians.
- Executives produces slightly less Unity than Politicians and now have a small amount of Energy upkeep in addition to their Consumer Goods upkeep.
- Colonists are now worker strata jobs.
- Pre-scripted ideal worlds are now flagged to not have anomalies.
- Embassy Complexes now grant a politician job. Grand Embassy Complexes now grant two politician jobs.
- The Vat-Grown trait from Genetic Ascension now renders the species completely infertile. The cost of the trait has been reduced to 2 points.
- Made Calamitous Birth's unique deposit increase the effectiveness of Lithoid unique traits by 50%. Made the Lithoid Crater only negativly inpact non lithoid species.
- Nationalist Zeal now gains +5% Diplo Weight per rival.
- Archaeotechs balance updates:
- Halved the energy upkeep of the Facility of Archaeostudies.
- Allowed the Expertise Archaeostudies trait to be selected in more cases.
- Added the Archaeotech Focus admiral trait, which grants increased damage and fire rate with Archaeotech weapons.
- Decreased the research speed and draw weight for Archaeotech from the Expertise trait, but made it reduce the Minor Artifact cost for ship components.
- The Archaeoengineers AP now reduces Minor Artifact cost for ship components by 10%
- "Scion" empires are now twice as likely to see an intervention (in the form of a task or reward) from their Overlord during the first 25 years of play. Normal probability (approximately a 1 in 50 chance each year) applies after that first event has fired.
- Leaders granted during the course of the "Scion" Origin now come with revised Traits and other such related perks.
- Increased a potential 2-year Trade Value bonus from Spy Network event "Drain on Resources" from 1% to 8%. This bonus ("Enterprising Spy Network") still requires you to first have a trade agreement with the espionage target.
- Xenophobe Supremacist faction is now unhappy when xenos are present on the council
- Buffed the Asteroid Hive Guardian strike crafts.
- The Supremacy Diplomatic Stance now applies a -50% modifier to diplomatic weight gained from technology and economy.
- All the Ascension Civics now grant your starting planets +1 Ascension Tier.
- Reduced Ranger Jobs from Ranger Lodge by 1. Ranger Lodge now provides 1 additional Ranger Job per natural blocker.
- Rangers now produce small amounts of energy, minerals or food depending on the natural blockers present on a planet.
- The Opinion lost with the Trader Enclaves for canceling a trade deal now scales with size of the deal.
- The starting head of research for Remnants empires now has the Archaeostudies Expertise trait.
- Increased the range of Macro Batteries by 50%.
- Reduced the draw chance of Archaeotechs if you don't have the Archaeo-Engineers AP.
- Defender of the Galaxy's opinion boost now only applies to independent normal empires.
- Deficit situations now reduce the base output of relevant jobs.
- Reverted changes to Feudal Society that were introduced in 3.8.
- Bio-Trophies are now considered culture workers.
- Slightly reduced the base unity output of Bio-Trophies.
- The Chosen will no longer spawn on Cadet or lower Difficulty or if the game is set to have no AI empires.
- Being declared a crisis counts as being in breach of galactic law for the purpose of gaining menace.
- Added an activation cost to all edicts because you all can't be trusted with this power otherwise
- Pompous Purists now have +10% Diplomatic Weight when opposing resolutions.
- Hydroponics Farm Building now gives 3 farming jobs.
- Payback Origin
- Restoring the MSI warship to a Habitat now costs 2000 Engineering research, but also grants Habitats as a research option
- Added the Atmospheric Infuser planetary feature to the unique habitat, granting +40% Habitability
- Technological Cache planetary feature now grants +10% Research from Jobs, 2 Researcher (or equivalent) jobs and +8 Max Research District Capacity
- Knights of the Toxic God Origin
- Added the Order's X-Calibrator planetary feature to the starting habitat, granting +40% Habitability
- Order's Demesne districts now give +0.5 Building Slots, +6 Housing and 2 Squire Jobs
- The Order's Castle and Keep now give 2 squire jobs
- Owning the Maw of the Toxic Entity now allows construction of Demesne Outposts in systems with Knight Habitat Complexes. These are Major Orbitals that give Knight jobs instead of modifiers depending on planetary deposit.
AI
- Told the AI it can build habitats in systems without Starports.
- Increased the weight for the AI to build habitats by a factor equal to the number of planetary bodies that support mining and research stations.
- Increased the weight for the AI to build habitats in the Core Sector.
- Increased the weight for the AI to build habitats in Void Dweller pre-scripted systems.
- Increased AI weight on habitat techs and AP where appropriate.
- The AI will now build a maximum number of science ships equal to the number of scientists they have that can crew them + 1 or 5, whichever is lowest.
- Made AI Void Dwellers more likely to take Expansion Traditions and less likely to take Adaptability Traditions.
- Increased AI weight for Voidborne AP if they have the Void Hive Civic, Knights of the Toxic Gods Origin or restored MSI’s flagship into a habitat with the Payback Origin.
- Increased Void Dweller AI budget for building habitats.
- Increased alloy income requirements for Void Dweller AI empires.
- Made AI Void Dwellers more likely to take Expansion Traditions and less likely to take Adaptability Traditions.
- Increased Void Dweller AI budget for building habitats. Tweaked AI weights for habitat megastructures.
Performance
- Fixed a case where country modifiers would continually recalculate every day
- Improved the performance of the council view by decreasing the amount of texture loading.
- Improved the performance of the leader list view by decreasing the amount of texture loading.
- Refactored calculations for trade value from living standards, leading to increased performance in the late game.
- Parallelized the Construction Queue updates for improved performance
- Parallelized trade route and piracy computations for improved performance
- Optimized ai evaluation of subjugation actions for better performance
- Improved performance by reworking the way multiple old events are fired, using on_actions instead of mean_time_to_happen
- Optimized triggers for a bunch of jobs, casus belli and opinion modifiers so they will evaluated less often, improving performance
Bugfix
- Ground Combat will no longer kill the last few pops of a regular colony through collateral damage
- Blocked players from being able to hotjoin as the Habinte Unified Worlds
- Fixed some leader traits that were not updated to be tagged as councilor traits.
- Prevented repeat appearances of an advisor popup triggered by other empires beating you to mutual First Contact.
- The initial Zroni digsite may no longer spawn on colonized planets.
- Hive Minds are now spared from having to wrestle with the metaphysical ramifications of a 'zeitgeist'.
- "Imperial Fiefdom" empires which are engaged in a war of independence against their Overlord may no longer opt to stay loyal to that Overlord once it begins to fracture.
- Empires which consume their constituent Species (such as for Livestock or as part of Grid Amalgamation) no longer hold negative Opinions towards fellow Xenophages.
- Occupying a Pre-FTL habitat (such as the one found in Federation's End) by way of military invasion or Operation Infiltrate Society now causes the correct type of capital building to spawn.
- Fixed Outliner observer button not becoming available when you get a game over.
- Fixed random empires sometimes having civics without their trait requirements (e.g. non-Aquatic Hegemon Subordinates with Anglers).
- Fixed empire's founder species not being updated after modifying all of the founder species' pops.
- Corporate Culture Site building will now change to Autochton Monument when reforming from Megacorp to Normal Empire
- Players can now rebuild merc enclave (in the same system) after it being destroyed
- Corrected the descriptions of deposits left as part of a pre-FTL interaction event, "Land Grabs".
- Fixed some modifers (such as armor) being applied to starbases twice.
- Fixed High Gravity planet modifier description for non-English loc
- Fixed Machine Empire separatists spawning without a valid government.
- Imperial Vassals can no longer trade their heirs to Overlords
- Temporary mercenary admirals from rented fleets no longer cost unity upkeep
- Name Randomization for Letters Of Marque + Criminal Syndicate should now work correctly
- Monuments which are added to colony worlds as part of the "Under One Rule" Origin are now dismantled (which is to say, the modifiers are removed) if that world changes ownership through trade or conquest.
- Corrected some adjectives used to refer to species classes - most notably those events which announce the discovery of pre-sapient lifeforms.
- Fixed edicts being unactivatable if your resources are less than the edict's upkeep cost.
- Corrected the spelling of Ukrainian entries in the UNE namelist, 'Human 1'.
- Added location data for the initial steps in all precursor event chains.
- Corrected various gendered pronouns in Galactic Paragons' "Death of a Great Leader" event.
- Fixed buttons consuming mouse events that they shouldn't.
- Fixed issue where, if other orders are available, the "Move Here" order in the galaxy view would always go to the star, not the starbase.
- Fixed slave revolts being able to spawn with a non-democratic authority.
- In the galaxy view, moving a fleet to the same system that it's currently in will now move it to orbit around the starbase or star.
- The "Strange Signal" / "Love's Labor's Lost" anomaly no longer appears for empires with the "Remnant" Origin. Cultural historians may rest a little easier now.
- Updated various sound effects used in the course of "Knights of the Toxic God".
- Added tooltips for council_agenda_progress_percent trigger.
- AI only anomalies that were supposed to spawn energy deposits now correctly do so, instead of spawning mineral deposits.
- Aiding the population suffering from the Zoonotic Plague will now halve the likelihood that a pop dies every month.
- Cease Robot Assembly decision now requires the Robotic Workers technology.
- Empire opinion of criminal syndicates will only be affected by branch offices inside the empire.
- Empires who are trying to become the crisis will no longer be asked to lead the galaxy in the War in Heaven.
- Fixed certain conditions for auto-migration e.g. being the last pop on the planet not being taken into account
- Fixed Gene Seed Purification not being randomly rolled in some cases.
- Fixed Habitat Central Control not giving some jobs for Corporate empires.
- Fixed incorrect building being shown behind Managers in the job view.
- Fixed not being able to roll Neuro-Quantum Link in some cases.
- Fixed scripted effects that alter Agenda Progress being able to set Agenda Progress to a negative value.
- Fixed the Death Cult civic listing an unobtainable civic in requirements. [X] Unity concept and playing around with header colours.
- Fixed the Guardian trait not applying its modifiers correctly.
- Fixed the tooltip for the adoption effect of Genetic Traditions not mentioning unlocking Clone Vats
- Immortal leaders should no longer get traits that increase their longevity.
- Removed criminals providing trade value in some cases. Made modifiers from living standards triggered to hide them.
- Robots with Servitude Citizenship can no longer have Shared Burdens or Employee Ownership Living Standards.
- Ship as Concept now uses your existing Science Ship designs.
- Subjects now support their Overlords resolutions in the Galactic Community correctly
- The Imperial Ruler/Heir trait now states that the leader does not have any unity upkeep.
- The Curators will once again have their minds blown when you figure out what the infinity sphere was doing.
- Fixed the Insidious Plot event happening to pre-FTLs.
- Renowned and Legendary Leaders can no longer be replaced with synthetic infiltrators.
- The Distress Signal event will no longer assume that the exploratory vessel is a science one nor that it has a leader.
- A hivemind will no longer talk about your multiple minds when establishing an embassy if both of you are gestalts.
- Fixed issues with name scoping in the The Charyoni Shielded event.
- Fixed the Last Gift situation not ending properly if you performed one of the special projects with a hired fleet.
- The Evacuation Protocols edict for the Doomsday Origin will now be available if your only available colony is artificial.
- Fixed the Reanimated Skydragon not using the zombie model.
- Gray, The Oracle, and The Beholder should no longer gain brain slugs no matter how cute they are.
- Removed any mention of a 365 day calendar in Stellaris.
- Fixed some force spawned empires having broken starbase configurations when spawned.
- Renamed several message types in the message settings to prevent duplicated message names.
- Fixed damage output of Macro Batteries.
- Added some missing draw weight modifiers to arcane deciphering.
- Custom human empires with Lost Colony now correctly spawn a parent empire
- Fixed the Spore Artillery of the Voidspawn not having correct stats.
- Stopped the pre-ftl tech progression situation from incorrectly not being destroyed or incorrectly being created in some cases.
- You can no longer designate a shattered ring segment to be a generator world if you cannot build generator districts on it.
- Blocked Incorporate Artifact Relays decision for Rogue Servitors
- Fixed Starbase upgrade cost being able to go negative
- Wenkwort modifiers now apply to culture workers, not administrators.
- Planets conquered by the Khan no longer have all of their districts and buildings ruined, though some hive-mind or machine intelligence specific buildings may still be lost.
- Set the Imperial Fiefdom overlord to never spawn naturally.
- Fixed being able to remove claims when at war if using the galactic map widget
- Habitat capitals now provide Evaluator jobs instead of Coordinator jobs
- Void Dwellers now get various buildings added by civics on game start if they have enough free building slots.
- Void Dweller Sol system now uses the updated Sol system textures.
- Gestalt empires with the Empath or Rogue Servitor civics can now correctly pacify Amoebas and Crystalline Entities
- Prevented the nested tooltips for Edicts and Traditions pointing to the Unity concept to stop an infinite loop.
- Fixed inability to focus on civilian ships by double-clicking them in the outliner
Modding
- Added is_paused script trigger.
- Added diplo_weight_rivals_mult modifier, which increases diplomatic weight for every rival the country has.
- Updated Starbase and Orbital Ring armor values to use scripted variables.
- Added unused modifiers for Restored Growth/Cognitive/Legion/Regulatory Node Additional Skill.
- Add agenda_cooldown and agenda_finish_modifier_duration parameters for council agendas to override the default defines.
- Add support for script_values in council agenda agenda_cost field.
- Added documentation for council agenda script.
- Removed ethic and initial_effect_custom_loc unused parameters from council agendas.
- Rename council agenda modifiers parameter to modifier, and remove mandatory curly braces usage.
- Added ship_friendly_territory_armor_add, ship_friendly_territory_armor_mult modifiers.
- Add is_on_galaxy_map event trigger for the local player's camera.
- Add set_ship_design effect to change an existing ship's design.
- Added diplo_weight_opposing_mult modifier, which increases diplomatic weight when opposing the current resolution.
- Added triggered_ship_design_modifier for component templates.
- Traditions now support triggered_modifier.
- Fixed message_setting_key not being localized.
- Added effects to give ability to change ruler and council position titles from script.
- random_weight for ethics now takes a country as its root scope.
- Fixed if_scaled_resolution not working correctly for all UI scaling values.
- Fixed ship_piracy_suppression_add and ship_piracy_suppression_mult not working in component templates' ship_modifier and triggered_ship_modifier.
- Updated some missing and inaccurate information in the tradition documentation.
- Added a hide_modifiers = yes / no parameter for civics and origins. It hides the modifiers from tooltips.
- Added add_council_agenda_progress_percentage effect and council_agenda_progress trigger.
- Added empire_size_add modifier.
- Added is_garrison trigger to check if a fleet is a garrison.
- Added on_colony_monthly_pulse on action that fires monthly based on the colony founding date.
- Added on_ship_disbanded on action. Fixed disbanding orbitals by the disband ship button not clearing the has_megastructure flag.
- Added hide_name = yes / no for megastructures.
- Added starbase_modules/00_example.txt to documentation accepted parameters for starbase modules.
- Better error logs for breaking max recursion limits in scripted effects and triggers.
- Changing the blocking of gestalt destiny traits from hardcoded to use the correct gamerule instead.
- Fixed dynamic event targets (with @ in them) failing when used in various places e.g. "exists = event_target:test@root".
- Fixed dynamic event targets being unable to understand dot scoping.
- Improved documentation for a number of effects.
- Made it possible to have interface defines that don't affect the checksum.
- Set numeral_0_icon to be $BLANK_STRING$.
- Split Origin and Civic descriptions into description and negative_description.
- Updated the script documentation for the create_leader effect.
- Added is_void_dweller_empire scripted trigger, which checks for either the Void Dweller origin or Voidborn AP.
- Trade deposits are no longer flagged to be mining station deposits.
- planet_housing_add now shows up to two decimal places.
- Added a define for ground combat collateral damage safe pops. Set it to 3.
Please note that the 3.9 "Caelum" Habitats Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - 3.9 Open Beta" branch.
Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test - 3.9 Open Beta" branch.
Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.
We’ve set up a feedback form here to consolidate your comments and suggestions.
Next Week
Next week we’ll be reviewing how the Open Beta has been going, and if there are any additional changes planned as a result of it.
