Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. Today is the second week of post-Synthetic Dawn 'filler' dev diaries, as mentioned in dev diary 87.

This dev diary is really just an update on the 1.8.1 beta that we put out last week to fix the major issues reported in 1.8. We have gotten a lot of good feedback from it both externally and internally, and we are now in the process of putting together a 1.8.2 update that contains all the fixes from the beta, as well as fixes for some issues introduced in 1.8.1 and some additional issues that were previously missed. 1.8.2 is currently in internal testing, and we hope to roll it out as soon as it clears QA. Once 1.8.2 is out, if no further critical issues are discovered, we will be wrapping up the 1.8 post-release support and fully move on to future development priorities.

Here is a list of the fixes and changes in 1.8.2 compared to 1.8. Note that bugs that were introduced in 1.8.1 but fixes in 1.8.2 is not included in this list!

Spoiler: Click to view 1.8.2 patch notes

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# Balance
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- Increased the distance at which empires are forced apart in random setups
- Changed the shape of ring galaxies to have a thicker ring, fixes many generation bugs (such as Fallen Empires not appearing) associated with them
- Contingency ships now use energy lances instead of Arc Emitters
- Reduced the rate of Contingency reinforcment fleets somewhat
- It is now possible to spawn 5 fallen empires in a Huge galaxy if you have Synthetic Dawn
- Buffed Processing Hub and Hive Node buildings to produce Unity
- Buffed Machine Worlds to 25% robot production output
- 200 years must pass in-game before a Crisis can occur, up from 150
- Cost of "Blocking the Ghost Signal" project now calculated based on number of owned Pops.
- Successfully assimilating a Pop as a Driven Assimilator now generates one month's worth of Unity and Society Research
- Driven Assimilators can now allow Cyborgs to procreate (they do not need food to grow)
- Buffed Devouring Swarm, Purifiers and Exterminators
- Assimilators can now research most Genetics techs
- Driven Assimilators can now derive Assault and Defense Armies from Cyborg Pops
- Pops are now assimilated much faster, on a per-planet basis rather than per-species basis
- Doubled the chance of getting the ""Hotfix"" Warning Signs event
- Reduced fleet power calc for very powerful ships, as exponential effects would cause it to get much larger than the ship's actual combat ability
- Fixed Flak being strictly better than regular Point-Defense rather than a tracking vs damage trade-off
- Planets now only start repairing at full speed 60 days after bombardment ends
- Added some armor penetration to Scourge weapons
- Reduced the effect of Admiral skill level on ship fire rate from 5% to 3% & changed general modifier to not overflow interface
- Reduced consumer goods cost of Chemical Bliss, Utopian Abundance and Social Welfare
- Increased the likelihood of High and Medium probability reward options in Shroud events
- Increased likelihood of several unique Shroud events granting special boons to fire
- Warning Signs (and Machine Uprisings) can no longer occur before 50 in-game years have passed
- Empires that have outlawed robotic workers before any Warning Signs events occur will no longer experience Warning Signs or Machine Uprisings

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# AI
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- Fixed some issues with sector AI not properly prioritizing tile resources when told to
- Fixed a bug where the AI would overprioritize food when food stockpile was not full
- Sectors now build robots by default
- Fixed unbidden AI sometimes freezing up when other ED factions spawned
- Fixed AI stopping colonization in some cases if it gained a high-habitability species without colonization rights
- AIs will no longer terraform while under crisis attack
- Fixed AI repeatedly asking player to join in a war they had already declined to join
- Fixed a bug where AI fleets would sometimes stop following their allies if fighting a defensive war against a powerful foe
- Fixed an issue where Guardians of the Galaxy would not fight the crisis because of the presence of another Awakened Empire
- Fixed an issue where the AI would not defend planets it had occupied from enemies from being taken back
- Fixed AI overprioritizing power plants even when it did not need energy due to only wanting to build energy-producing buildings on unpopulated tiles
- Fixed a case where AI would get stuck on enemy mining stations, unable to move their fleet away
- Fixed machine AI personalities having an excessive penalty to diplomacy, even with other machines
- Fixed a bug where the Scourge would build military stations in systems it didn't need to defend, instead of systems it does in fact need to defend
- Fixed AI Machine Empires ceasing to build armies under some circumstances

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# Interface
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- Made Artisan Troupe button tooltips consistently display what resources the player is lacking, rather than just a "We cannot afford this" message

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# Modding
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- Traits are now restricted by moddable species archetypes rather than species classes, so new species classes need only be assigned the correct archetype instead of having to be added to every trait. Archetypes can be set to inherit the traits of other archetypes for easy creation of new archetypes with unique traits
- Added support for species archetypes to inherit their trait points from another archetype

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# Bugfixes
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- Breaking a guarantee no longer creates a bilateral truce
- Disabled Selected Lineages techs for Assimilators
- Organic sanctuaries are now properly assigned to primitives when conquered
- Fixed some Fanatic Purifier dialogue referring to the wrong empire
- Planets in outliner are now properly sorted by distance to capital in all circumstances
- It is no longer possible to declare on the tributary of an empire that you have a truce, non-aggression or other war-blocking status with
- Fixed stacking -%unrest modifiers that added up to more than 100% reduction resulting in a negative modifier that applied massive unrest
- Hive Minds can no longer use the decadent trait
- Fixed Synthetic Ascension disabling the ability to set species rights and potentially locking in invalid species rights
- Neuro-Electric Amplifier building is now available in habitats
- Uplink Node building can now be upgraded in habitats
- Spare Parts Depot and Gene Clinic can now be upgraded on Habitats
- Fixed an OOS when some player(s) have Plantoids DLC while others don't
- Fixed Determined Exterminators and Devouring Swarms not getting the swapped Purity tradition tree name and description
- Fixed Determined Exterminators not getting the Autonomous AI tradition swap
- Fixed Synthetically Ascended empires being unable to assimilate cyborgs
- Ghost Signal no longer affects Synthetically Ascended empires
- Fixed Fallen Empires not making demands due to believing they had been defeated in a war
- Fixed the calculation for winner in democratic election not working correctly in some cases
- Fleets on passive stance can now be ordered to make manual attacks on mining & research stations
- Fixed Spare Parts Depot line of buildings not being researchable for Machine Empires
- Fixed Social Engineering Edict (it was strictly worse than the basic one non Authoritarians get)
- Fixed vassals not being able to colonize within their own borders
- Symbol of Purity is now properly restricted to one per planet
- Restored old keyboard shortcut for increasing speed
- Fixed rebel countries sometimes getting one Ethic too many
- Enigmatic Observer Fallen Empires now hate Fanatic Purifiers, Devouring Swarms, and Determined Exterminators slightly less, removing instant war declarations
- Fixed tributary war demand not working
- Fixed a bug where releasing vassals as a Hive Mind or Machine Authority would result in broken ethics/authority setups
- Fixed non-swapped modifier names being used for name-swapped traditions
- Added a cap on planet combat repair, as crisis planets were otherwise nearly impossible to destroy with light stance
- Fixed military power of robotic/synth armies being overvalued to the point where the AI would not invade planets defended by them
- Fixed Psionic Ascension not changing founder species, creating a variety of bugs
- Fixed cyborgs getting double leader age boost from species and leader trait
- Fixed the End of the Cycle not properly preying on colonized worlds
- Fixed some issues with fleet reinforcements for crises
- Fixed sector colonization setting not working properly
- Fixed Synthetic Ruler Trait not having an effect
- Fixed the Machine Uprising not taking control of Military Stations properly
- Fixed some Warning Signs events potentially reoccurring after a Machine Uprising
- Machine Empires can no longer research Positronic AI
- Fixed liberating planets as a Machine Intelligence giving rise to Despicable Neutrals
- Fixed issue where Machine Empire capitals did not produce additional Unity from Distributed Computer tradition.
- Fixed Prethoryn Scourge ceasing to spawn reinforcements once they had 100 armies built
- Fixed an exploit where you could have one more than one Dyson Sphere/Science Nexus at a time by releasing the system to a vassal while under construction
- Fixed issues with not being able to repair Megastructures
- Fixed Decent living standards being available to Assimilating pops
- Psionic expertise can no longer be given as a trait to Machine scientists
- Fixed erroneously getting the 'Hopeless War' notification when attacked by an Awakened Fallen Empire
- Removed duplicate percentage sign in Adaptive Ecology Tradition description
- Fixed minor color issue in Contingency diplomatic text
- Fixed a bug where the Contingency would get stuck trying to withdraw its fleets to the final machine world
- 'Country destroyed' notification disabled for when nationalist rebels defect to their former empire
- Species that are set to be assimilated will no longer be targeted by Land Appropriation
- Removed Atmospheric Filtering for non-Serv, non-Assim MIs since it is useless for them
- Fix food surplus not being calculated correctly with sectors (sector pops were twice as hungry as they should be)
- Fixed MI namelist to avoid use of the word ""Habitat"" to distinguish between AP Habitats"
- Fixed a missing ID that was resulting in an unlocalized string during colonization (BUILDING_CONSTRUCTION_COLONIZATION)
- Created a leader event called from on_actions that removes the Sapient/Custom AI Assistant traits from any leaders that have them when a player changes their policy to Outlaw AI.
- Fixed leaders with Arrested Development gaining negative experience rather than simply not leveling up
- Fixed CTD when attempting to randomize secondary species name without selecting a portrait first
- CTD fix when using a mod with duplicate species class
- CTD fix when using a country that doesn't have a tech module
- Fixed an overflow error causing purged pops to produce massive amounts of resources
- Defeating the Machine Uprising no longer results in biological pops saved from it having recently conquered malus
- Fixed refugees being able to flee to planets that are occupied, under bombardment or under colonization
- Fixed bio-trophies not being given an organic sanctuary on migration
- Fix CTD related to modded planet classes

That's all for today! As with last week, I leave you with another screenshot of the internal Stellaris development build, presented without context or explanation.

 

[Jorlem]

The new system is currently broken and orders planets by distance to the center of the galaxy rather than distance to capital. I think someone said its fixed in 1.8.2, so its probably best we hold any final judgement until then. It would be nice if there was an option to select which sort order you wanted to use.

Even when it is fixed, the new system will insert planets into the middle of the list, which is my main issue with the system, as I described earlier.

Additionally, a secondary thing for me is that, to me, "distance to capitol" is roughly as useful as "distance to galactic core", as I play primarily with hyperlanes on spiral galaxies. Just because a planet is closest to the capitol by a straight line, it does not mean it is the closest in terms of actual travel time. This seriously hurts the functionality of the upgrade fleet and repair fleet buttons, and I don't like the idea of even more mechanics buying into the assumption that everyone uses warp or wormholes.

 

[Thorin]

So EU4 works fine

Stop right there. It does not work in EU4, check the last devclash video, where both side basicly disregarded any attrition and supply limit, since they made too much money and the unlimited mercenery manpoolsize made any loss irrelevant. Beyond the first 100-200 year your army will not reflect any historical reality and sense.

 

[Princess Stabbity]

So, dont make it have anything to do with supply, and more about coordinating large fleets during combat. You could have penalties to fire rate and evasion as you go over the cap.

This. Some people get too hung up on names. A mechanic is a mechanic no matter what it's called. And Stellaris is a game, it's made of game mechanics. Immersion should be a secondary concern at best and should never stand in the way of improved gameplay.

 

[Mr Thursday]

Entropy means supply mechanics will always be with us. Not having resupply is immersion breaking (and also breaking the laws of thermodynamics).

 

[CrowScape]

and also breaking the laws of thermodynamics

They have FTL. Breaking the laws of thermodynamics is just collateral damage when you're telling causality to go $%#@ itself.

 

[Kayden_II]

I don't really understand the "hate" for doomstacks since it's a usual strategy to minimize the losses in a battle, but the thing is, that the game doesn't really encourage multiple fleets ...

The USA or Russia have the ability to bomb this world within seconds, whereas it takes ingame-years or at least ingame-months to damage / kill a single building / POP, so that there's no need to attack or to defend multiple colonies with multiple fleets since any attacking fleet can't really cause significant damage until the opponent-fleet arrives ...
This leads to the other point, that the the FTL-engines are too fast, so that there's no need to station multiple fleets at multiple strategic points like the home-world or multiple borders since any fleet can reach any destination within ingame-days or at least within a few ingame-weeks + To slow down the FTL-engines is also necessary (for the player) to have enough time to respond to the attack of multiple AI-fleets ...
This leads to the last point, that the AI doesn't use multiple fleets, so that it's natural, that the player tries to hunt down the AI-doomstack with its own one to minimize his/her losses in a battle.

 

[Mavkiel]

I don't really understand the "hate" for doomstacks since it's a usual strategy to minimize the losses in a battle, but the thing is, that the game doesn't really encourage multiple fleets ...

Doomstacks are annoying because it trivializes combat. All you need to do is have your single stack, defeat their single stack, and you win. Sure, it drags on a little while, while you bomb and invade worlds. The actual difficult part is over after the first battle. This also is annoying because there really isn't any way to find favorable ground so your weaker stack can defeat a more powerful one. -- The closest thing is using a military station and making them fight you in its radius. Which is rather silly considering how weak stations are, they seldom make any difference. (Hell, I am happy when the AI builds them, because they warp me right to their world so I can bomb them faster)

If you actually had to be careful with your doomstack, it'd make it far more tolerable. I am reminded of Star Craft, I was playing one of the basic maps in multiplayer, as a protoss. It was a 3v3 map, and my allies managed to get themselves killed very quickly. So, I fell back to the middle of the map, which was up on a ridge with only a single entrance, I then fortified it, and built a couple armies to sortie out. -- In the end it took them two hours, with full control of the map to dig me out of my hole. The point of the story is, their doomstacks didn't help them much, because while I had a much weaker army, I picked the terrain.

If they made nebulas and the like really hurt to fight in, it'd probably help as well. Perhaps some of them drain shields fast, others eat away at armor.. basically anything to make combat in certain areas tricky. Maby even a region of space that disallows emergency withdrawal.

 

[Adrik Thorsen]

Will you ever fix the sector AI building unity production buildings on 4 minerals, when there are empty and resource-free tiles?

The best cure for this is direct building in sectors, which is now allowed, with redevlopment disabled for your sectors. The AI is still pretty shifty. Now if only they'd stop letting the AI move pops in sectors....

 

[Jman5]

- 200 years must pass in-game before a Crisis can occur, up from 150

I just completed my first 1.8.1 game with this change, but it felt like the crisis hit way too late. By about the year 2360, I had already defeated an awakened empire, built a couple of mega structures, and I had a fleet that could blow away any federation or empire out there. So basically I sat around twiddling my thumbs, completing a ringworld, and occasionally building a few more ships while I waited for 2400 to roll around. Except even then it took another 20 years after that for the crisis to emerge and by that time I had already accidentally won.

Once the Contingency emerged, not only was I too strong for it, but the rest of the galaxy had fleets strong enough to at least contend with their attack fleets. The galaxy more or less kept them contained while I stomped their main worlds. I even have my habitability setting at 50% so it's not like I had a million worlds to fuel my fleet.

I guess I'll have to play around with the crisis slider, but my main concern is the delay between when you've basically won and when the crisis can strike. I think it would make more sense to have the earliest Crisis spawn time happen earlier for higher difficulties. That way more experienced players who can get things done in less time will have a more seamless transition into the end-game crisis. Plus it will challenge them more if the crisis is happening before they can get the galaxy in order.

 

[redrum68]

The best cure for this is direct building in sectors, which is now allowed, with redevlopment disabled for your sectors. The AI is still pretty shifty. Now if only they'd stop letting the AI move pops in sectors....

Agree. It drives me crazy when I build all the right buildings and put pops on them but then the AI decides to move the pops to ridiculous places... Some way to disable the AI from moving pops just like you can have it not redevelop tiles would be great.

 

[Frizzy]

Oooohhh so:

- Super weapons (buildable titans)
- Super shipyards so we actually have relevant targets to attack
- Super fortresses so we actually have a use for static defense now that we have valuable targets to defend

Sounds great!

Aren't you all afraid that now there will be a suepr fllet, with asuper titan, attacking/defending a super fortress protecting a super shipyard making it a super doomstack vs superdoomstack ? I would be more hype if I saw different formations in the back ground or a ship breaking away from formation and running away. Or better even map of an empire with several enemy fleets from a single empire attacking different systems. Hopes are up, but no word of any change in the mechanics yet.

 

[Mrakvampire]

Aaaaand... Where is 1.8.2?

 

[Ikael]

Aren't you all afraid that now there will be a suepr fllet, with asuper titan, attacking/defending a super fortress protecting a super shipyard making it a super doomstack vs superdoomstack ? I would be more hype if I saw different formations in the back ground or a ship breaking away from formation and running away. Or better even map of an empire with several enemy fleets from a single empire attacking different systems. Hopes are up, but no word of any change in the mechanics yet.

I am hoping, yes, that we will see a warfare rework. That being said, the introduction of massive shipyards alone would change a lot of the warfare system just by the virtue of creating valuable strategic targets for warfare rather than keeping empires a mass of same-ness as it is now, because that would mean that where and when do you strike with your doomstack would matter. As of now, that type of situation only arises with galactic crises, me thinks.

 

[yiome]

Just encountered the psi ascension bug... suddenly a quarter of my pop became undesirable is not a good way to end a game...
good to see the fix is in 1.82 patchnote at least. Hopefully it can make to beta soon.

 

[Astax]

I just completed my first 1.8.1 game with this change, but it felt like the crisis hit way too late. By about the year 2360, I had already defeated an awakened empire, built a couple of mega structures, and I had a fleet that could blow away any federation or empire out there. So basically I sat around twiddling my thumbs, completing a ringworld, and occasionally building a few more ships while I waited for 2400 to roll around. Except even then it took another 20 years after that for the crisis to emerge and by that time I had already accidentally won.

Once the Contingency emerged, not only was I too strong for it, but the rest of the galaxy had fleets strong enough to at least contend with their attack fleets. The galaxy more or less kept them contained while I stomped their main worlds. I even have my habitability setting at 50% so it's not like I had a million worlds to fuel my fleet.

I guess I'll have to play around with the crisis slider, but my main concern is the delay between when you've basically won and when the crisis can strike. I think it would make more sense to have the earliest Crisis spawn time happen earlier for higher difficulties. That way more experienced players who can get things done in less time will have a more seamless transition into the end-game crisis. Plus it will challenge them more if the crisis is happening before they can get the galaxy in order.

Heh reminds me of my game where in habitat .25 I killed all 4 worlds simultaneously. 4 fleets with 4 lvl 10 admirals

 

[VectorX]

Can you not implement a remove_edict effect to remove planetary edicts? remove_effect does not work on edicts

 

[ItWasRhetorical]

Uhh. Are those Titans, or just BBs humping each other?

 

[Xephos Demonslayer]

Hey Wiz. Really glad to be seeing some of this stuff. Build-able Titans confirmed? Besides that, I have an actual issue. I've been commenting this on several videos from Paradox Extra trying to get an answer, because it's really been bugging me. I was playing a generic, non special civic machine consciousness, and I conquered some robots that were doing mining for the organics who built them. There are two issues here, one's a bug, the other conceptual. The bug is that the robots have my regular citizenship, Machine integration, (Assuming Direct Control made my day) which gives .50 consumer goods, but the robots also had the robot trait, which gave .50 consumer goods. This stacked, making these (arguably less advanced and cheaper) robots cost twice the consumer goods as my (more advanced and likely more expensive to make) networked robots. The second part, was this: I was able to keep the robots, as in I COULD purge them, but wasn't forced to. I tried to robomod them, but encountered this conundrum: I COULD robomod them, but I can't really DO anything with them. I feel that there should be an option to either robomod the machine trait that the networked robots have on them or set non sapient robots built by organics to a special assimilation living standard (similar to that of the driven assimilators), so that I can add non networked robots and droids (and even non sapient synthetics) to my collective. Another idea I had is that they could only be robomodded into the intelligence after getting the Synthetic Age Ascension Perk, similar to how hive-minds can only assimilate other organics after biologically ascending. The AI uses robots at a VERY small scale (far smaller than I do at least, where I end up having a robot on every last mineral tile), so I don't feel this would be an abuse-able mechanic, instead it would just be an interesting facet of playing a machine intelligence in the early to mid game before AI gets fully researched. And from a lore point of view, I can totally see a machine intelligence going "Hey, these fleshbags made robots for us; so lets slap our software into these guys and get them to work." I'm not sure how assimilating sapient synthetics would work or if it could be done at all, but can you please add a way to assimilate non-sapient robots/droids/synths into a machine intelligence. If you took the time to read this, thanks for listening, even if nothing is done about it. I just wanted to bring this to your attention in case you missed it, as it seems to be a very specific scenario. In the mean time, I'm gonna enjoy 1.8.1 and assimilate everything. Maybe I can assimilate Blondie if you won't pamper him? He wouldn't have any individuality left with which to complain... or I could assimilate you... Whoever gives me all the info on the next big thing in the game first doesn't get assimlated. Bye guys!
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REPLY

 

[System Lord Ra]

Oh no i am in a middle of game with mods in 1.8
So my saved games is unplayable / incompatible now ?

 

[Nobody Special]

I wish they would fix federation fleets so that we can use the same travel mode or at least be able to see the hyper lanes so that you can see where to go. Other than that thanks for working so hard and great game!!