[Dev Team] 4.0.22-Wilderness Open Beta 2025-07-08 Updated (checksum 26d5)

[Eladrin]

Hello, Stellaris community!

The Wilderness Open Beta has been updated again, with fixes to Workforce calculations, advanced and endgame AI plans, a fix to espionage, improvements to district tooltips, and more.

Here is a list of what we've changed:

Spoiler: 4.0.22-Wilderness Open Beta 2025-07-08 Update

4.0.22-Wilderness Open Beta 2025-07-08 Update​

Balance:​

• Substantially increased the base Command Limit of fleets and most sources of Command Limit. We know you were going to doomstack those fleets anyway. (This is secretly mostly for performance reasons, don't tell anyone.)

Bugfix:​

• Fixed Workforce calculations.
• Fix to Neural Chips in the Synaptic Lathe not functioning properly.
• Planetary Logistic Deficits slider should now correctly apply.
• Erudite trait now correctly applies to Leaders when gained through Adaptive Evolution
• Fixed certain events not correctly creating buildings when initializing planets or otherwise changing AI controlled worlds.
• Fixes wilderness biomass not being updated when loading an older savegame
• Open Beta Only: Spy Networks should once again grow properly.

AI:​

• Continued improving the AI's economic plans to be more effective.
• AIs now have distinct advanced and endgame economic plans that focus largely on Research, Naval Capacity, and whatever it is they use to build ships.
• The AI is less enthusiastic about building Storm related buildings.

UI:​

• Pop Strata with no possible unemployment (like Civilians) hide the Unemployment values in collapsed planet jobs view
• Improved District tooltips:
  • Hovering a district now shows the scaled and separated modifiers
  • Hovering the build button shows the values for a single district (this is what you'll gain)
• Instead of being essentially omnipresent, the orange briefcase in the outliner now indicates that you have 500 or more Civilians + Unemployed pops on the planet. (100+ Unemployed pops should still override it with the red briefcase.)

Stability​

• OOS fix related to bombardment and ground combat
• Potential OOS fix related to Grand Archives

Modding:​

• Added ship_reactor_power_add/mult modifiers
• The num_empires trigger now correctly counts the number of empires instead of the number of fallen empires. Whoops.

The complete list of previous changes in this branch (excluding the new one) are here:

Spoiler: 4.0.22 Ongoing Release Notes

4.0.22 Ongoing Release Notes​

Improvement​

• Significant quality of life and system changes to Wilderness empires.
  • To prevent issues with biomass not being available on planets due to construction, all Wilderness jobs are now automatically worked without requiring biomass. These jobs are worked by your primary species.
  • Jobs for Wilderness are now also properly represented instead of being worked by a single pop with massive workforce bonuses, you now see exactly how the job is worked, and the sliders are also now usable to customize how much of each job will be worked.
  • These changes are intended to prevent situations where some jobs would go unworked, make Wilderness less bug-prone, and are intended to give you more control over your economy in deficit situations. Please provide feedback!
• Grown pops now spawn in a default stratum and job (like “Civilian”) instead of being unemployed their parents' stratum
• Planetary Automation no longer actively tries to keep some civilians around.

Balance​

• The Arc Furnace no longer decreases in Mineral output as it increases Alloy output. The stages are now: 1m, 2m, 2m+1a, 2m+2a.
• Updated the broadside stingers to correctly follow the 24-36-48 small slot-equivalency for their weapon slots. The youngest stage now has more medium slots but fewer large slots, while the adult and elder stages only have large slots.
• The Cipher Mauler has given up two of its small weapon slots in exchange for two point defense slots
• 20% of the habitability ceiling reductions from Shattered Ring blockers have been moved to the more easily cleared Ancient Rubble blockers.
• Shattered Ring Origin now starts with two additional Scrap Mining districts.
• Various guardian space critter factions will now ignore ftl inhibitors.
• The diplomacy tradition "The Federation" now also gives 25% progress in the Federation Code technology
• The Holo-Museums acquired from the Curator enclave now swap Entertainers (or Evaluators) to Curators (or Curator Drones). These jobs produce Unity and Amenities, with each Holo-Museum adding additional job upkeep and output. Holo-Museums can now be constructed in research and resort specializations. Finally, these buildings are improved by the Archaeo-Engineers AP.
• Galactic Curator civics also swap Entertainers (or Evaluators) to Curators (or Curator Drones)

Bugfix​

• Fixed the Controlled Evolution achievement checking you had the pre-BioGenesis genetic ascension. Also made it check that the species that granted the achievement did in fact have genes.
• Fix Slaver Guilds constantly reassigning slaves and never enslaving workers
• Updated the ship role handling of the cosmogenesis biological ships
• Cosmogenesis biological ships can now equip the unique components of the equivalent regular biological ships, excluding growth components.
• Fixes building limit calculation that was causing incorrect removal of buildings.
• Fallen Empire trade buildings should no longer self destruct
• The Corporate Embassy now correctly gives trader jobs for Worker Coop empires
• Fix to building limit logic that was destroying things like the Archaeostudies building.
• Land Appropriation once again kicks pops off their planets and makes them into refugees.
• Strategic resource maximum for invalid countries is now calculated as zero
• Fixed edge cases where shipyards could have ships from the old owner in the construction queue after being taken over
• If you change your civics but not your authority the Ruler Chips modifiers should no longer reset.
• Synapse drones job modifier will use the correct icon in the building effect summary.
• Jobs production modifier fix in nested tooltip for Serviles trait
• Maze Harbingers now use the correct amount of naval capacity
• The hive Sensorium building no longer mentions Evaluators
• The effects of the Galactic Curator civic councilors (both regular and corporate) now apply to Entertainers
• Fixed Integrated Preservation still giving modifiers to Evaluator jobs
• Job swaps that require buildings on a planet now require the building to not be disabled.
• Improved consistency with the tooltips for the Galactic Curator civics
• Virtuality Machine Empires on Ringworlds should no longer get regular engineering or physicists jobs, only gestalt ones.
• Behemoth empires that have become Ever Hungry will no longer get "Nice Guy" event options, such as not being allowed to space Reth Unddol.
• Unrest.4200 will no longer generate descriptions that don't describe the planets.
• Improved dead object database
• Science ships can no longer continue progressing archaeological sites without a leader
• Biomass and Neural Chip Processing and Unprocessing jobs now have unique names so it's easier to tell what's going on.

AI​

• The AI should no longer occasionally just decide to stop building anything and wait for the sweet release of death.
• Reduced the AI's love of hydroponic farms and other static job resource production buildings, and commercial nexuses.
• AI is more likely to build Engineering, Physics, or Society Research modifying buildings if they have a specialization focusing on that research branch on the planet.
• AI Shattered Ring empires will now actually clear their blockers to make use of their other habitable segments. They also favor the techs that are prerequisites for their shattered ring blockers.
• AI Shattered Ring empires will wait a bit longer and space out their colonization of the other segments.
• AI now has a better opinion of housing buildings and will not blow them up as often.
• AI (and automatic tech selection in general) now more strongly favors techs that unlock District Specializations.
• Reduced the "stickiness" of trade and urban designations on planets
• The AI now has a greater preference for Cruisers and Battleships.
• Adjusted AI priorities regarding research and trade targets.
• The AI is no longer quite as gung-ho about Defense Privatization.
• AI will no longer spam amenity buildings if it doesn't actually need them.
• AI will no longer mix unity or trade district specializations with research or industrial specializations.
• AI will now re-evaluate planet designations once per year.
• Relaxed some restrictions regarding the AI building "flat job" buildings like Research Labs and Foundries.
• The AI will now only build Research Specialization buildings on planets likely to have those types of researchers, but are more likely to do so than before.
• The AI will only build more than two Strongholds on planets with a Fortress District Specialization.
• AI Void Dwellers will now correctly budget alloys towards building Districts.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would order fleets to follow one another, resulting in no fleet movement at all

Stability​

• Fixed an OOS at reconnect related to the bureaucrat job
• Fix OOS related to Specimens and Exhibits
• Fixed an OOS when a client uses a different language from the host
• Fix CTD related to specimens
• Fixed another OOS at reconnect

Performance​

• Fixed biomass growth on_monthly being called for non-wilderness empires
• Refactored parts of the Planet UI to improve performance, this likely has the greatest benefit for lower end machines
• Improved Nascent Stage Logic by roughly 75%. Let your favorite gladiatorial beasts flourish!
• The AI will no longer constantly be starting and canceling Arc Furnaces and Dyson Swarms
• Minor improvement to refugee_effect
• Minor improvement to handling modifiers
• Memory leak fix from faulty pattern.

UI​

• Update Deposits when a blocker is cleared while Planet view is open
• Centered the army icons to be in the middle on background
• Habitability and Dig site no longer overlap each other in the Planet UI.
• Pop amount in the Current Population does not overlap other elements when it has more than 2 digits anymore in Planet UI.
• Pop Count of Pop Group in the Ressettlement Window does not overlap when it has more than 4 digits.
• New icon for strange wormhole
• Introduced min/max pitch settings for Ship model preview: It will no longer do sharp and unpredictable turns when turning the ship model around.

Modding​

• Add district_limit to buildings
• Console commands now use country index instead of country ID, making them easier to use
• Add displace_pop_amount effect that simply raises on_pop_displaced
• Add research speed and draw chance modifiers for tech types (rare, dangerous, insight, custom)
• Added a new ignore_ftl_inhibitors flag for the country type. Setting this to true, would enable that country type to ignore FTL Inhibitors.
• It is now possible to override the Icon for the dynamically generated modifiers by adding a [modifierName]_icon entry in the localization.
• Added on_queued, on_unqueued, on_built effects for district specializations
• Added a capital_tier parameter for capital building and an associated planet scope trigger.
• Refactored the has_x_capital scripted triggers to account for capital building tiers

As mentioned before, these changes are expected to be released on the live branch in August, and your feedback will determine whether or not we keep the Wilderness changes. (Currently we're leaning towards "yes".) Please keep your feedback coming.

To opt into the Wilderness Open Beta, go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "wilderness- Wilderness Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. You may need to restart Steam to get it to appear.

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

 

[Metallichydra]

But base Naval Capacity is not increased?
Won't it look a bit strange to start with 20 base Naval Capacity, but 50 base fleet limit?

 

[Eladrin]

But base Naval Capacity is not increased?
Won't it look a bit strange to start with 20 base Naval Capacity, but 50 base fleet limit?

Yes, Naval Capacity was not changed. Your Command Limit does indeed exceed your Capacity at the start of the game, but Capacity is a soft cap and is easier to increase.

 

[ScorpioneOrzion]

But base Naval Capacity is not increased?
Won't it look a bit strange to start with 20 base Naval Capacity, but 50 base fleet limit?

Never gone above that limit early game? Like you can easily go to 50 60 corvettes even with just a base naval cap of 20, the upkeep is little enough for it to matter

 

[Metallichydra]

Never gone above that limit early game? Like you can easily go to 50 60 corvettes even with just a base naval cap of 20, the upkeep is little enough for it to matter

It was meant more as a question of aesthetics.

 

[Bane97]

It was meant more as a question of aesthetics.

Wouldnt that kind of go against the whole
fleets/ships --> lag

As far as i can see the command limit was increased to keep the balance of the current naval capacity
while reducing amount of fleets per empire (e.g. 3 small ones --> 1 big one)

 

[redvictorx4]

Heh this allows for mercs encalve to be made without having to increase command limit, cool!

 

[Eladrin]

Heh this allows for mercs encalve to be made without having to increase command limit, cool!

We are considering increasing that requirement proportionally, but haven't in this patch. We'll keep an eye on feedback.

 

[Barbe93]

Change on fleet command limit is amazing also for the RP perspective, usually late game you end up with dozens and dozens of fleets, having less, more meaningful ones is actually pretty cool.
I suggest to take a look at mixed fleet comp ships’ behavior tho, they always act pretty bugged when you have mixed ship types with different combat computers in the same fleet although it is how it’s intended to be!

Edit: you didn’t upscale the command limit given by the supremacy tradition, is this intentional?


Thanks!

 

[LogicMage]

I've been waiting for ship_reactor_add and ship_reactor_mult for years. Would also recommend increasing the merc enclave command limit as well. I'll play around with the increased command limit later todya

 

[Imp0815]

4.0.22-Wilderness Open Beta 2025-07-08 Update​

Balance:​

• Substantially increased the base Command Limit of fleets and most sources of Command Limit. We know you were going to doomstack those fleets anyway. (This is secretly mostly for performance reasons, don't tell anyone.)

I'm sorry but how should we interpret this?

 

[garger97]

• Substantially increased the base Command Limit of fleets and most sources of Command Limit. We know you were going to doomstack those fleets anyway. (This is secretly mostly for performance reasons, don't tell anyone.)

While it might be ‘meta’ to doomstack one type of ship in fleets with the way admiral traits work, this further minimizes the strategic aspects of fleet management or admiral selection.

This in exchange for a performance increase, which was supposed to come with the pop-rework of this patch, is IMO not a welcome change. I sincerely hope more strategic &/or tactical player decisions are not going to be put on the chopping block to make up for the performance increases that have yet to materialize with the rework.

I was really hoping for changes in the opposite direction where maybe the number of ships OVERALL was reduced significantly—supporting both performance issues and increasing the importance of both ship and admiral selection in a fleet. Not to mention I think it might be a little more immersive to actually notice when I lose a battleship rather than it being one of the hundreds late game (1000’s if corvette missile art-comp spam).

Hoping this will not turn fleet combat back into an exhausting game of border system doom stack whack-a-mole.

 

[Imp0815]

While it might be ‘meta’ to doomstack one type of ship in fleets with the way admiral traits work, this further minimizes the strategic aspects of fleet management or admiral selection.

This in exchange for a performance increase, which was supposed to come with the pop-rework of this patch, is IMO not a welcome change. I sincerely hope more strategic &/or tactical player decisions are not going to be put on the chopping block to make up for the performance increases that have yet to materialize with the rework.

I was really hoping for changes in the opposite direction where maybe the number of ships OVERALL was reduced significantly—supporting both performance issues and increasing the importance of both ship and admiral selection in a fleet. Not to mention I think it might be a little more immersive to actually notice when I lose a battleship rather than it being one of the hundreds late game (1000’s if corvette missile art-comp spam).

Hoping this will not turn fleet combat back into an exhausting game of border system doom stack whack-a-mole.

I'm so close to going on a tangent rant about this, but I want to see the full explanation for this move — because he definitely knows how some people here are vocal and feedback-intensive about this issue. So this doubling down feels like such a heavy-handed slap in the face on so many levels, I can’t wait to write about it.

Spoiler: it’s not just about the critique of doomstacks, but also truly about the people in opposition denial to this issue.

 

[jedavis]

Wouldnt that kind of go against the whole
fleets/ships --> lag

As far as i can see the command limit was increased to keep the balance of the current naval capacity
while reducing amount of fleets per empire (e.g. 3 small ones --> 1 big one)

I suspect this is aimed at pathfinding lag computed at fleet level outside of combat, rather than at combat lag from many ships engaging at once.

 

[Metallichydra]

Edit: you didn’t upscale the command limit given by the supremacy tradition, is this intentional?

Same for the admiralty civic

 

[Ilab]

I have to agree with someone above. I (and afaik lots of people) would prefer less ships overall. Would it not be better to increase ships costs considerably and adjust caps accordingly? It should help with the performance and make ships more impactful. It really feels bad that you build hundreds of battleship and nothing else and don't really care for them. We need more ship variation and make bigger ships more meaningful imo.


EDIT: Also, basic traits genemodding (adding and removing) for all bio ascension paths when?

 

[RingworldUtopia]

While it might be ‘meta’ to doomstack one type of ship in fleets with the way admiral traits work, this further minimizes the strategic aspects of fleet management or admiral selection.

This in exchange for a performance increase, which was supposed to come with the pop-rework of this patch, is IMO not a welcome change. I sincerely hope more strategic &/or tactical player decisions are not going to be put on the chopping block to make up for the performance increases that have yet to materialize with the rework.

I was really hoping for changes in the opposite direction where maybe the number of ships OVERALL was reduced significantly—supporting both performance issues and increasing the importance of both ship and admiral selection in a fleet. Not to mention I think it might be a little more immersive to actually notice when I lose a battleship rather than it being one of the hundreds late game (1000’s if corvette missile art-comp spam).

Hoping this will not turn fleet combat back into an exhausting game of border system doom stack whack-a-mole.

let's be honest. in the endgame having too many fleets was making it impossible to do ANYTHING strategic or tactical with them. my 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 buttons on my mouse go from being specific fleets, to being 4-5 fleets each by the endgame. in fact, in the last games i've resorted to simply using the 6 button for all fleets in one group, and then breaking off the federation fleet and gdf fleet and grouping those together as the only breakoff group. this meant instead of having 5 battlegroups, i'm reduced to only one battlegroup and a doomstack. whereas if i could reliably have a million fleetpower in each fleet i would ABSOLUTELY still use my 1-5 system so i can manage multiple fronts. it becomes WAY too much when I absolutely have to have 12-20 fleets just to face one fallen empire doomstack, so i end up literally losing track and not being able to keep up with assigning them to a key.

 

[Calvax]

I'm so close to going on a tangent rant about this, but I want to see the full explanation for this move — because he definitely knows how some people here are vocal and feedback-intensive about this issue. So this doubling down feels like such a heavy-handed slap in the face on so many levels, I can’t wait to write about it.

Spoiler: it’s not just about the critique of doomstacks, but also truly about the people in opposition denial to this issue.

I don't think it's that deep. Numbers of fleets adds to performance issues, people were grouping them together anyway, so as a quick fix fleet cap has gone up.

Now isn't really the time for an in depth attempt to rework the military system and this change doesn't prevent that from happening in the future.

 

[Imp0815]

I don't think it's that deep. Numbers of fleets adds to performance issues, people were grouping them together anyway, so as a quick fix fleet cap has gone up.

Now isn't really the time for an in depth attempt to rework the military system and this change doesn't prevent that from happening in the future.

Well, that sure is a reasonable explanation for this change — but after endless recurring discussion, years of changes to the tertiary system, and additions that boil down to gimmicks, we basically get an admission on this topic in a beta update, casually stating...
You know what? I’ll just wait for a response before I overthrow myself.
Maybe I’ll just wait a day or so — because I barely had any sleep last night and I’m running on 2 liters of coffee by now. Not the ideal baseline for this.

 

[Miuramir]

I'm sorry but how should we interpret this?

As I understand it, it's currently believed that AI fleet decisions and/or fleet path (re)calculation is a significant contributor to reduced game performance. Given that the AI is supposedly now doing a lot better economically and with shipbuilding, this may actually make the slowdown worse, because the AI is (hopefully) now actually building the ships and fleets it should have been all along but wasn't.

It's a fairly simple test; does roughly halving the number of fleets improve performance in real games in a visible way?