Stellaris 3.99.2 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[NotAYakk]

While I would love to have proper scaling support for the older games I doubt it is going to happen; it would likely require rewriting entire UI code to support it.

I recently got a 4k monitor and spent some time experimenting things. I found the results mostly acceptable when using either 1.5 scaling in-game (and 100% scaling in Windows or disabled Windows scaling for Stellaris) or 150% scaling in Windows. I also got slight improvement when I enabled AMD's Radeon Image Sharpening 2. For now I left it at 100, but that might change when I play Stellaris more again.

I also tried with Lossless Scaling software to use integer scaling (as GPU drivers support it only for exclusive fullscreen applications and I love to alt-tab when playing stellaris so that was not an option), but the results were quite disapointing.

... and now I somehow managed to break Stellaris entirely in way that Windows forcibly rearranges windows, Stellaris gets minimized and can't bring it to front at all. Need to figure out what happened and try again later.

Scaling issues for Stellaris and older games probably warrants entirely separate thread rather than mixing it with beta talk.

Writing a solid UI scaling engine is difficult! I should know, I helped write one.

You basically need a dynamic layout engine, rules to ensure regions always end on integer borders (like lines), and to decide if at 1.5x scaling do your lines stay 1 pixel thick or go to 2 pixel thick? (when does that happen?), and ditto for whitespace (does a 1 pixel gap become 2 pixels earlier than a 1 pixel line)?

1.5x often you'll want 1 pixel thick lines (2 looks really bold) but sometimes 2 pixels of whitespace instead of 1 is an upgrade. And you can't just scale everything to integers or some lines get rounded thicker and some thinner - the scaling has to happen in the UI layout engine, and know (either via hard-coding or via dynamic data) how the sub-components scale.

The OS itself is going to be hopeless at scaling stuff at anything besides integer multiples - 1x, 2x, 3x etc - and most people end up wanting 1.25x to 1.5xish.

Post-processing "image sharpening" always breaks my brain, as I can see it and its bugs.

If they don't want to do a full layout engine rewrite, they could create 1.2 and 1.5 scale versions of the UI manually, then scale them up, giving you 1.0x (1), 1.2x (1), 1.5x (1), 2.0x (2), 2.4x (2), 3.0x (3), 3.6x (3), 4.0x (4), 4.5x (3), 4.8x (4), 5.0x (5) [...] zoom modes (number in brackets is how thick a "1 pixel border line" is).

 

[NotAYakk]

In my experience Trade Production early game easily outscales planet Upkeep.

This might change by the mid to late game, however. And especially if you deploy fleets.

So I went and build a research district a bit early, and specialized my 2 colonies as alloy farms.

The result was an economic crash - nobody wanted to be a worker, so my energy/minerals/food supply went away. Hydroponic stations kept me on the brink of starvation. Space-based mining was my only source of minerals. Energy and CG deficits ping-ponged, and I had to manually allocate what workers I had to keep food/energy/CG from collapsing into deficit. Tech showed up super quick, and early on I had lots of alloys, but as my economy faltered I had to keep shoring things up.

I was selling rare resources to get trade, then using trade to keep energy shortages and CG shortages and food shortages at bay. If my fleet left port the logistical costs skyrocketed, so I kept them as a fleet-in-being against a genocidal neighbour.

This is all in the corvette era. And it looks like the AI had similar problems, as its fleet stagnated at a small size after being destroyed by some space critters.

For decades my economy sat at the edge of ruin. If I blinked, I got a shortage (and I used the situation that happened to save more resources to delay the next collapse). Trading with a non-hostile ancient empire saved my bacon, as it wanted rare resources and would give me a decent rate for energy.

Robotic population, locked into being workers, saved me for a while as it meant they wouldn't auto-promote to specialists and twiddle their thumbs and consume resources I didn't have. I was causing specialist unemployment in an effort to get people to demote, but I'm not sure if it works; the unemployed specialist job seemed to soak them up.

Slow expansion into resource-rich systems was a boon, and that together with technological efficiency boosts pulled me most of the way out of the economic collapse, at least faster than the genocidial AI. I started a war with them before they could get on their feet, hopefully I can claim some resource-generating systems (they are a hive mind, so I don't get pops out of this) to support my economy.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

Colony ships should take pops from the system that it was built as a cost (this means 100 pops are just being transported from old planet to the new colony and 100 pops don't just magically appear)

it could also open the possibility of having many species on a colony ship, if they're build empty and collect civilians from UrbWorlds

 

[Newbee53]

This is not for 3.99.2, but 3.99 in general.

Colony ships should take pops from the system that it was built as a cost (this means 100 pops are just being transported from old planet to the new colony and 100 pops don't just magically appear)

Expansion tradition that gives colonies 100 more starting pop should be changed to either:

1. Increase migration speed to new colonies; or
2. Increase migration attraction to new colonies; or
3. Increase the number of pops transported by a colony ship.

Stellaris should move away from those things that give free pops, save for a few specific occasions like events or relics.

how often do you have a shipyard anywhere other than your capital (During early game when colonizing anyways) and what happens when you want to colonize that species elsewhere in your empire? Does this mean I have to build shipyards above every colony if I want to colonize with a species living in that colony?

This feels kind of restrictive in an unnecessary way.

it could also open the possibility of having many species on a colony ship, if they're build empty and collect civilians from UrbWorlds

Combining these two you might make it so that you build an empty colony ship and 'board' pops from various planets before colonizing. but this also feels a bit icky. mainly because it would turn colonization into something very micro-heavy.

It would be kind of fun, but I don't think it fits stellaris' vibes right now. Unless you have an 'automate' button, but that would just delay colonization to some degree and makes me wonder what good it is.

 

[Scyobi_Empire]

Combining these two you might make it so that you build an empty colony ship and 'board' pops from various planets before colonizing. but this also feels a bit icky. mainly because it would turn colonization into something very micro-heavy.

It would be kind of fun, but I don't think it fits stellaris' vibes right now. Unless you have an 'automate' button, but that would just delay colonization to some degree and makes me wonder what good it is.

it could be abstracted, like forced migration is where pops teleport, but anything that stops shipyards from printing out organic beings is a good change

 

[Newbee53]

it could be abstracted, like forced migration is where pops teleport, but anything that stops shipyards from printing out organic beings is a good change

Maybe, but then you run into more developed empires and the question of why pops all came from the same planet, and how weird it is that the capital is sending out people when they should really be working those research jobs, or whatever.

Something that could be much better handled if the expansion planner was more robust. something that was 'a good idea' but didn't get the love it needed. I'm still hopeful for something similar for branch offices.

Ah well. With the planner, you could que up colonization and possibly have a button that's like 'change colonist pool' or whatever. then the default could be controlled by migration/colonization rights and people who want it could have more control. I think there is potential here, but the execution would need some serious thought to make workable. not a bad thing mind. fodder for a smaller update maybe.

 

[The Founder]

The result was an economic crash - nobody wanted to be a worker, so my energy/minerals/food supply went away. Hydroponic stations kept me on the brink of starvation. Space-based mining was my only source of minerals. Energy and CG deficits ping-ponged, and I had to manually allocate what workers I had to keep food/energy/CG from collapsing into deficit. Tech showed up super quick, and early on I had lots of alloys, but as my economy faltered I had to keep shoring things up.

"Crashing your worker economy by overbuilding specialists" did not get less dangerous in the Beta
Just cut back on jobs you can't run anyway.

 

[GnoSIS]

"Crashing your worker economy by overbuilding specialists" did not get less dangerous in the Beta
Just cut back on jobs you can't run anyway.

The problem is that you can't do that in advance of changing the zones. Tha game instantly promotes all workers on zone change into specialists, and if you change the slider down you will end up with unemployed specialists for years and no workers.

 

[Mole204]

An update means that everything I know might be wrong. But it never means that everything wrong in the game has been repaired.

Planet UI and pops menus?
There's some minor gameplay tweaks to do. Factory zones that don't build consumer goods buildings. It won't let me build the autocuil building because I don't have a unity zone. It won't let me build a unity zone because I haven't unlocked or researched something. Nope. Gonna do away with that as soon as I can find the right mod to do so. It needs to be much more flexible than it is.
I don't get the new civilian numbering, especially since it also tries to count them as pops.
But it isn't creating popups so I'm assuming it's working, maybe. The pops menu seems to be intentionally geared to be uninformative and unhelpful. It's confusing not because I'm confused, but because all known points of reference and use have been changed.
The "zones" need work. And any improvement is the same as turning them back to the way that they were- useful instead of nearly useless.

The changes to make buildings complicated are being used to obfuscate that the Civilians are just there to make things more complicated.
Paradox has always wanted Stellaris to be played one way while a very high percentage of players have all wanted it to be done a more efficient way. Whenever the players get the game working a fun way, Paradox "fixes" it to do thing Paradox's way. It has always been annoying and should have stopped long ago.

Planets are not as prosperous as they were. This is natural, since the new beta is run without the mercy of the modpacks. Building needed buildings on planets is more difficult, and that is being hidden by "wow! new changes! big fun! honest! just a beta." Planets are not the focus of Stellaris. Building output is the focus of planets, not the populations. It's proven that it runs without crashing, but at the same time, there are several natural slowing points in production that causes some of the game economy to be smaller, less, than it would be with the modpacks. Or what it was before the buildings/zone changes.

Army- it's ok so far? I might be having trouble landing and taking a planet, or I might be doing something new wrong. I just can't tell. It's really simple, so there's no way that I could be messing it up.

 

[GnoSIS]

Army- it's ok so far? I might be having trouble landing and taking a planet, or I might be doing something new wrong. I just can't tell. It's really simple, so there's no way that I could be messing it up.

Ground Combat is totally broken.

Just do orbital bombardments - all planets surrender in a day. Go and Have fun!

 

[Critical Ethics]

I think amenity zones don't quite work for me. It seems odd to devote one of your three limited slots to just maintaining the planet itself.

I think what I'd like is for amenity buildings to work as kind of mini-zones. Add three more building slots to the capital zone (maybe make them tech locked behind the capital upgrade techs), then add a static amount of amenity jobs to the amenity buildings (+ maybe like 1/10th of a zonesworth of per-city scaling). So on a smaller or underdeveloped planet you can get away with just dropping a few amenity buildings and calling it a day, but on a large well developed planet one zone is pretty much going to have to be a dedicated amenity zone - but you get a few extra government zone building slots as a consolation prize.

 

[NorseGod]

So I went and build a research district a bit early, and specialized my 2 colonies as alloy farms.

The result was an economic crash - nobody wanted to be a worker, so my energy/minerals/food supply went away. Hydroponic stations kept me on the brink of starvation. Space-based mining was my only source of minerals. Energy and CG deficits ping-ponged, and I had to manually allocate what workers I had to keep food/energy/CG from collapsing into deficit. Tech showed up super quick, and early on I had lots of alloys, but as my economy faltered I had to keep shoring things up.

Yeah, so in 3.99.2 the economy is ridiculously fragile. I've tried several runs, and either I run into a huge power crisis, or I run out of CGs and Unity.

Yesterday I got a year 76 relatively stable empire, with habitable worlds turned all the way up. I had my capital, with the standard resource districts. As I expanded and added stations, that gave more basic resources so I could add city districts to the capital - but ONLY when I already had unemployment to deal with. Then I got three colonies, each focussed on a single basic resource, with a single city district, and luxury residences for amenities, and an industrial zone to help with CGs and Alloys.

My Capital zones were a constant juggle. at first I added an industrial zone with amenities in the Govt zone. Then when I got a third zone, I made it Unity, and scrapped the early industrial zone to make a dedicated amenities zone. I destoryed and rebuilt the amenities buildings in the zone (great system), and the Govt zone became a robot factory and precint house/gene clinics as neccesary.

When my capital was out of space for districts, I waited until I had unemployed middle class pops and began the shuffle: replacing a base resource district on my capital with a city tile, moving the now-unemployed workers out to the colonies, to fill jobs in the base resources. Once the colony got to about 6 districts, amenities start running low and I'd have to swap the industrial zone for amenities, until the planet was big enough to get a second zone. Distributing luxury goods and playing with the Govt zone might have gotten me through this, I didn't try that. Once each of the colonies maxxed out on districts for their resource focus, I would spill over into extra power districts (or food for the generator colony) as I was swimming in metals.

Year 76 and I'm swapping pops with a neighbour, so able to grab a 5th planet and it's developing into another generator planet, with a few city districts to help with GCs. As it stands, I have no research zones at all, research points are now coming only from stations and a few planetary anomalies. I'm about to get a 6th planet, and I think I might be able to get it to do research, we'll see.

 

[The Founder]

I think amenity zones don't quite work for me. It seems odd to devote one of your three limited slots to just maintaining the planet itself.

According to the lifestream, tomorrows new Beta will fix that.

 

[Nithralder]

I've been a long-time Stellaris player, and I have to say that I’m really not happy with the direction the upcoming Beta Release is taking. The new update completely disrupts the pacing of the game, making it feel off compared to previous versions.


One of my biggest issues is accessibility of information. It feels like basic game mechanics are now harder to track. For example:

• Population Growth – Where can we even see this easily? Managing pops and assigning them to jobs feels clunky and unintuitive. Growth doesn’t make sense compared to previous versions. Before, we could see a list of all the growth modifiers and penalties, but now this information is either buried or missing.
• Food & Resource Management – Where do we even see our food requirements now? How do we efficiently produce food? This used to be straightforward, but now it feels like there’s crucial information missing.

Another major issue is the fundamental design of planets and buildings in this update.

• Planet Size Feels Meaningless – Before, you wanted the biggest planet possible because it meant more buildings and districts. Now, it barely seems to matter due to the way the new system handles growth and development.
• Buildings Lost Their Appeal – The game was designed around constructing buildings as a core mechanic, but in this update, it doesn’t seem to make much sense or work well with the new direction. The way they function now feels unimpactful and disconnected from previous strategies.

On top of that, the new UI is a mess. It feels like a downgrade rather than an improvement. Important details that were once easy to find now require extra clicks, or worse, seem to be missing entirely.


Overall, I’m really disappointed with this update. I understand that changes are inevitable, but this one doesn’t seem to improve the experience—it makes it worse.

 

[NorseGod]

I've been a long-time Stellaris player, and I have to say that I’m really not happy with the direction the upcoming Beta Release is taking. The new update completely disrupts the pacing of the game, making it feel off compared to previous versions.

...

On top of that, the new UI is a mess. It feels like a downgrade rather than an improvement. Important details that were once easy to find now require extra clicks, or worse, seem to be missing entirely.


Overall, I’m really disappointed with this update. I understand that changes are inevitable, but this one doesn’t seem to improve the experience—it makes it worse.

A lot of this is because it's a beta, the UI and lack of information and tooltips will change as they develop.

But I can't say I disagree with you too much. Right now the "specialized zones" in the city district seem like kind of a trap. I build amenities in the Govt Zone at first, until it gets overwhelmed and then I have to build a whole zone for amenities, trash the buildings, and rebuild them in the zone. That's super inefficient and annoying. Especially given that Amenities are a base resource needed by all planets; it's basically just a version of Consumer Goods that you can't export.

If they were going to go with this system, from the ground up, it almost needs to have "zones" anchored to specific base buildings. For example, you have a job that provides Amenities per city district, enough to provide for all the pops in that district plus a bit more for unemployed pops. Then if you want to build energy/metal/food districts, you need to build an "Amenities" building in the main Government Zone, which adds a bonus percentage boost to base amenities jobs, as a spillover for the other districts. If you have a planet that's around 50/50 city and resource districts, it should be balanced. And then if the planet is mostly energy/metal/food zones, you "upgrade" that Amenities building, which leaves it in the Govt Zone, but adds an Amenities Zone, which lets you add buildings that create more base amenities jobs, or with tech adds things like Gene Clinics or Holo Theaters that add amenities and other resources. In this way, the zone becomes a "fix" for planets that lack big cities and focus on base resources.

Then if you want to make a research world, you have a "Research HQ" building in the Govt Zone, and then "upgrade" that building to create a Research Zone, where you can build labs to add Research Jobs, or other research-type buildings that modify or add different jobs.

But to do that, you're going to need a lot more free building slots in the main "Government Zone", at least one more per unlocked zone on the planet. And at that point you have to ask, what exactly is this new system actually doing? What problem is it solving, really? Is this actually better than just having an open selection of building slots, not stuck inside a nested system?

Right now all this does is make the "Upgrade Base Resource" buildings, the motes/crystals/gas buildings, and resource storage buildings as "free" upgrades, in terms of building slots. And then it adds a bunch of complications to the rest of them. And I don't see the benefit, and it hasn't been communicated to us. Does it make the AI a lot better or faster somehow? Is it way easier to calculate to reduce late game lag? I don't get it.

 

[NotAYakk]

I want to be able to drag and drop buildings from one zone to another, if it is a legal building in the destination zone.

I'll even pay for it!

 

[NorseGod]

I want to be able to drag and drop buildings from one zone to another, if it is a legal building in the destination zone.

I'll even pay for it!

But what even is the point of the City Zones system? "Yes you can specialize planets, but only in a couple ways". Like what problem is this solving, really?

 

[BaliorPal]

DO NOT DELETE the Early Industry Zone EVER!

This zone is the thin veil between life and death in the beta. It provides all the jobs you need to maintain a stable income and research. If you delete it, you will face constant unity shortages, have no research, and end up with millions of unemployed pops.

I repeat, DO NOT DELETE THAT ZONE! It’s the best zone you could wish for!

"Early Industry Zone" sounds like something that needs to be deleted. At the very least, they should rename it to something more refined, like "Capital Industry Zone." The current name is at the very least harmful from a roleplay perspective. Having an EARLY Industry Zone in the capital of my empire, which has conquered the entire galaxy, is ridiculous. They should either nerf it significantly to match the name (it's the most profitable zone in the game, and replacing it with anything else is simply irrational) or rename it.

 

[Nithralder]

A lot of this is because it's a beta, the UI and lack of information and tooltips will change as they develop.

But I can't say I disagree with you too much. Right now the "specialized zones" in the city district seem like kind of a trap. I build amenities in the Govt Zone at first, until it gets overwhelmed and then I have to build a whole zone for amenities, trash the buildings, and rebuild them in the zone. That's super inefficient and annoying. Especially given that Amenities are a base resource needed by all planets; it's basically just a version of Consumer Goods that you can't export.

If they were going to go with this system, from the ground up, it almost needs to have "zones" anchored to specific base buildings. For example, you have a job that provides Amenities per city district, enough to provide for all the pops in that district plus a bit more for unemployed pops. Then if you want to build energy/metal/food districts, you need to build an "Amenities" building in the main Government Zone, which adds a bonus percentage boost to base amenities jobs, as a spillover for the other districts. If you have a planet that's around 50/50 city and resource districts, it should be balanced. And then if the planet is mostly energy/metal/food zones, you "upgrade" that Amenities building, which leaves it in the Govt Zone, but adds an Amenities Zone, which lets you add buildings that create more base amenities jobs, or with tech adds things like Gene Clinics or Holo Theaters that add amenities and other resources. In this way, the zone becomes a "fix" for planets that lack big cities and focus on base resources.

Then if you want to make a research world, you have a "Research HQ" building in the Govt Zone, and then "upgrade" that building to create a Research Zone, where you can build labs to add Research Jobs, or other research-type buildings that modify or add different jobs.

But to do that, you're going to need a lot more free building slots in the main "Government Zone", at least one more per unlocked zone on the planet. And at that point you have to ask, what exactly is this new system actually doing? What problem is it solving, really? Is this actually better than just having an open selection of building slots, not stuck inside a nested system?

Right now all this does is make the "Upgrade Base Resource" buildings, the motes/crystals/gas buildings, and resource storage buildings as "free" upgrades, in terms of building slots. And then it adds a bunch of complications to the rest of them. And I don't see the benefit, and it hasn't been communicated to us. Does it make the AI a lot better or faster somehow? Is it way easier to calculate to reduce late game lag? I don't get it.

I completely agree with you. The new building system makes absolutely no sense. It feels like they’re adding layers of complexity for the sake of complexity, rather than improving anything.


The specialized zones seem restrictive and counterintuitive. Your example with amenities is exactly the kind of problem I’m talking about—why would I want to build amenities in one place, only to later have to demolish and relocate them? That’s just bad design. And like you said, amenities are an essential planetary resource, so turning them into this weird, inflexible system just makes things worse.


The entire Government Zone concept feels forced. Why do I have to use specific buildings to "unlock" other zones? It seems like a solution in search of a problem. If they were going for a more structured city-building experience, they should have just made it more intuitive—right now, it’s just frustrating and unclear.


Your point about needing more free building slots is also spot on. Right now, the system is arbitrarily restricting choices and making planet development feel tedious. It’s harder to plan out a planet properly when you have to navigate a bunch of artificial restrictions.


And that’s my biggest issue: What problem is this actually solving? Does it make the AI better? Does it improve performance? If the devs communicated a real reason for this change, I might be more open to it. But right now, it just feels like unnecessary complication that makes managing planets way less fun.


Honestly, if they’re going to push this system, they need to rethink how zones work and actually give us a good reason for this change. Otherwise, they’re just making Stellaris harder to play for no real benefit.







I would have preferred a system similar to this.

The UI should show the districts like this, color-coded district zones for each category (Food, Energy, Alloys, Research etc) then the Buildings would just be what the Government Zone does now currently in the beta.





(Not This, this system sucks)

 

[Falrinn]

For those interested, the live stream touched on some of the points being discussed.

The relevant points are this:

The Early Industrial Zone is being replaced with the Urban Zone. The Urban Zone can accept almost any building and provides Clerk Jobs, and on your capital starts with a Basic Office, Basic Science Lab, and Basic Factory. While these are less powerful than the versions you can build right away, they lack the explicit massive debuffs the Primitive Factory currently has.

Pretty much all buildings will once again provide a flat number of jobs. This notably includes the Holo-Theatres, making Amenity Zones less mandatory.

Jobs will no longer fill one at a time. Jobs will instead fill mostly evenly with some preference going to higher strata jobs or jobs with favorable traits.