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Stellaris Dev Diary #345 - Upcoming 3.12.3 Improvements

Hello everybody!

Last week we released 3.12.2 to the public, and since then we’ve been working on further post release support. Today we’ll be going into some of the things we’re planning for a 3.12.3 release. Currently we’re looking at next Thursday as the tentative release date, but we’ll keep you posted.

Selected Changes and Improvements from the Changelog​

Following the deluge of feedback from the release of The Machine Age, 3.12.3 will include the following changes:
  • Selecting the “physical” path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the advanced machine traits from the Modularity path for Machines.
  • Selecting the “virtual” path for Synthetic Ascension will unlock the Virtual Economic Policy from the Virtuality path for Machines. (Though the policy has been rebalanced.)
  • The unique planetary features added from the Transformation situation are now kept when turning a planet into an ecumenopolis or restoring a shattered ringworld.
  • Synthetic authorities have been rebalanced.
  • The Commodities Consolidation situation will now show if you are on track to produce enough consumer goods or if you do not have enough storage space to the quota.
  • The Virtuality, Modularity and Nanotech tradition trees now have agendas.
  • Cybernetic Creed:
    • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed no longer forces a template onto your species.
    • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now gives +10% Faction Approval when they become your sole Spiritualist faction (This does not apply if you unite the Creeds).
    • Embracing a Cybernetic Creed now awards a unique country modifier for that Creed.
    • Non-Spiritualist pops in a Cybernetic Creed empire now only have the Cybernetic Creed traits removed instead of all Cyborg traits.
  • Synthetic Fertility:
    • Your choice in the Virtual Salvation event now influences the Synthetic Society Shift in the Digital Refactoring event chain.
    • Finishing the situation now grants access to the Subsidized Identity Backups and Optimized Identity Creation edicts.
    • Completing the Synthetic Fertility event chain will now grant additional robot modification trait points and picks and award a unique free trait for your synthetically ascended population.
  • Refugees won't willingly resettle to the Synaptic Lathe anymore.
  • Dark Matter Engines have been reduced from +60% Resource Production to +40%
  • Virtuality Adoptions grants a -15% metallurgist and artisan production

Solar System Tooltips​

As a small QOL UX improvement, if you can construct Arc Furnaces or Habitats, the tooltips for solar systems will now include a summary of the system potential for both megastructures.

Arc Furnace Potential and Habitat Orbital Capacity Screenshot

Kill-a-Structure​

Long have the conquered Hyper Relays of your fallen enemies been the bane of your economy, however in 3.12.3, this will be changing with the addition of the ability to dismantle select kilostructures.

Kilostructures that will be allowed to be dismantled (for a moderate energy and time investment) will be limited to:
  • Gateways
  • Hyper Relays
  • Dyson Swarms
  • Arc Furnaces

As always, modders will have the ability to extend this to their megastructures (and make us weep in horror).

No Disassemble Number 5!

The pesky UNE will soon have their railway network dismantled!

Even better if you have a Scavenger civic, dismantling buildings, districts and kilostructures will give you a slight refund on any physical resources used to construct them.

1716294358494.png

Election Tweaks​

We’ve added the ability for Civics (and other sources of country modifiers) to easily modify the length and variance of election terms along with the government screen now showing the length of election terms in your empire. Two civics have made use of these changes

Worker Cooperative now has a -50% to Election Term Length making it have the same as a regular Democracy.

1716294374506.png

Meanwhile, Shadow Council now grants +5 to Election Term Variance, as the powers-that-be in the shadows ensure elections never occur on a regular basis.

1716294386415.png

What’s Next​

If all goes according to plan, next week’s dev diary will be the 3.12.3 release notes. I expect that we'll have one more release after that before we head off for the summer, so keep on submitting bug reports and suggestions, they’re very helpful for allocating post-release support resources.

See you next week!
 
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is it a good idea to expect player to search hundred of system for best arc furnace placement

wouldn't it make more sense to include habitat and arc furnace in expansion planer format

player can check planet with highest district very easily right now

why not let them check the system with most major habitat potential too
I know it's not the most ideal situation, but EVERY time I put down an outpost, I've been making sure to check out the system and rename it to something that stands out. I imagine I'll still do that to some degree even with the new qol.
 
What about Orbital Rings? In a recent game, the Scourge killed a few but something bugged out and it kept leaving the remains of multiple rings behind on one planet.
Got a bug report with a save for us to look at?
1) Will this give synthetic fertility access to virtual pops in any way? That would be incredible!

They've been able to get the virtual trait on their pops from day 1, pick a virtual authority swap after completing the synthetic tradition tree.

2) We now have with worker cooperative a civic for Mega Corps that reduce the term to a 10 year election. What i really would like to have is a civic that changes it to lifelong terms like dictatorial or even like imperial with a dedicated heir. Is something like that planned?

Not planned, but I like the idea.

Doesn't Cosmogenesis desperately need a nerf? I'm seeing screenshots of over a million research coming from the Lathe. At the very least, we need to be able to tell when empires take the perk, so that we can immediately prepare to fight them before they run away with the game.

I believe Mr. Cosmogone has been looking at it, I'm not sure what he's got planned though.
 
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Love the protection added to the Transformation special deposits, and would like to ask if there is any intention to apply such protection to other non-ecological/geological deposits? Things like the Odd Factory, Toy Factory Complex, Weapon Extraction Facility, Portal Research Area, and (maybe) Zone A which are tied to buildings or limited geographical spaces would make sense to preserve. Looking through the wiki page there are a bunch I haven't listed which would also work.
 
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Love the protection added to the Transformation special deposits, and would like to ask if there is any intention to apply such protection to other non-ecological/geological deposits? Things like the Odd Factory, Toy Factory Complex, Weapon Extraction Facility, Portal Research Area, and (maybe) Zone A which are tied to buildings or limited geographical spaces would make sense to preserve. Looking through the wiki page there are a bunch I haven't listed which would also work.
My opinion on the topic: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hen-transforming-planet.1680708/post-29645553
 
A lot of great changes so far. Any plans on making the AI a bit more competent at utilizing pop modification? They still aren't very great at taking advantage of special traits from ascension paths or adding the new automodding traits
 

Solar System Tooltips​

As a small QOL UX improvement, if you can construct Arc Furnaces or Habitats, the tooltips for solar systems will now include a summary of the system potential for both megastructures.


This doesn't count as a 'small QOL improvement' ... it's a bloody huge one

Kill-a-Structure​

Long have the conquered Hyper Relays of your fallen enemies been the bane of your economy, however in 3.12.3, this will be changing with the addition of the ability to dismantle select kilostructures.

Kilostructures that will be allowed to be dismantled (for a moderate energy and time investment) will be limited to:
  • Gateways
  • Hyper Relays
  • Dyson Swarms
  • Arc Furnaces

As always, modders will have the ability to extend this to their megastructures (and make us weep in horror).

View attachment 1136591
The pesky UNE will soon have their railway network dismantled!



Same with this
 
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I might be too late, but two additional small QoL changes you might consider:
  • Display star-only pre-bonuses yields (for Dyson Swarms) at galaxy view
  • Computation Core Focus policy currently has no option to choose none and retain the clerk trade bonus - add a fourth policy to change back to normal?
That is all. This looks like some really good QoL stuff already.
 
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The upcoming changes look really good. Being able to dismantle captured hyper relays, gateways, and other kilostructures is a great QOL feature.

Is there a fix for the ship designer black screen bug in this update?

 
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Is this permanent? because if so IMO it completely kills Virtuality as an ascension path for anything but pure flavour. Yes Virtuality in its current release state is way too powerful, but thats because of how insane the power spike is. It falls off hard later on. This reduces the power spike, but also makes it fall off even harder late on.

Also it seems like it would hurt individualist machines way harder than gestalts as the latter don't care about the nerfed outputs for their Unity and Research Generation.

What the ascension really needs is a cut to its early power but more ways to boost itself late game.
I agree that it would be better to smooth out the power spike than nerf it in general, but I disagree that this is going to make Virtuality somehow unviable. Virtuality will be just fine.
 
What!? How does this work? What are the steps I need to take? Is this a policy I need to tick? A reform I need to make?

The Digital Refactoring event chain you should get after completing Synthetic ascension allows you to choose if you want your government to be focused on the physical or virtual, choosing to go virtual replaces the Synth trait on your pops and leaders with the Virtual trait.
 
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What about Orbital Rings? In a recent game, the Scourge killed a few but something bugged out and it kept leaving the remains of multiple rings behind on one planet.
The outliner in my current game is clogged with dozens of copies of ruined orbital rings from long wars with the Khan and Contingency. Sometimes the orbital ring is destroyed but respawns in working condition after I reclaim the system, while still leaving a ruined orbital ring as well. Other times, it remains destroyed but still duplicates.

Honestly more an inconvenience than an urgent bug though. Things like combat computers treating maximum range as median range and causing battleships to fly into close combat is much worse.
 
The outliner in my current game is clogged with dozens of copies of ruined orbital rings from long wars with the Khan and Contingency. Sometimes the orbital ring is destroyed but respawns in working condition after I reclaim the system, while still leaving a ruined orbital ring as well. Other times, it remains destroyed but still duplicates.

Can we get a bug report for this please?
 
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Is there any chance we could also dismantle/decommission habitats? It's super annoying to have a planet in a system you've conquered and not be able to make an orbital ring around it, because whatever empire owned the system before you built a habitat there.
 
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Is this permanent? because if so IMO it completely kills Virtuality as an ascension path for anything but pure flavour. Yes Virtuality in its current release state is way too powerful, but thats because of how insane the power spike is. It falls off hard later on. This reduces the power spike, but also makes it fall off even harder late on.

Also it seems like it would hurt individualist machines way harder than gestalts as the latter don't care about the nerfed outputs for their Unity and Research Generation.

What the ascension really needs is a cut to its early power but more ways to boost itself late game.
Really? I thought this is a pretty slight nerf to the absurd power of infinite pop at ~year 40.
What do i care if many other builds can produce more stuff at ~2300 when they are all already pathetic compared to a virtual Empire at that point? Even If you could catch up, they won't allow that... If they are smart.

Nerfing alloys doubles down on it's (imo) biggest weakness right now: early Aggression. (If you have to pump unity like a madman there isn't much left for defense)
On the other Hand, you can almost adopt & finish the tradition in one go, so the nerf comes only month before the biggest production spike imaginable... With or without 15%

TLDR: i think it is a sensible nerf, but doesn't address vitualities inherent "rush it or leave it" nature and it's crazy power levels when rushed.
 
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Is there any chance we could also dismantle/decommission habitats? It's super annoying to have a planet in a system you've conquered and not be able to make an orbital ring around it, because whatever empire owned the system before you built a habitat there.
You can just destroy the orbital, even if the habitat is built on top of the planet.
 
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