Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

[Eladrin]

Another update today for the weekend! Lots of important changes in this one.

Spoiler: Stellaris 3.99.3 'Phoenix' Open Beta Release Notes

Stellaris 3.99.3 ‘Phoenix’ Open Beta update​

Fixes and Improvements​

• Habitats are now semi-functional in the Open Beta.
  • Habitats now derive their maximum mining, generator, and science district development based on the resources in the system. Orbital deposits grant 1 + (half their base value, rounded down) maximum district development.
  • Habitat orbitals are automatically constructed for free when a new district is completed on the central habitat complex, if one can be built
  • Habitat orbitals are now megastructures instead of dummy fleets, preventing them from being attacked (and therefore attempting to to flee from attackers)
  • Habitat orbitals now collect the resources from the deposit that they are built over
  • Habitat orbitals now have the same upkeep as mining and research stations, since they serve similar purposes
  • Habitat districts now take longer to build and cost alloys to build
  • Habitats now gain +0.25 Max Districts per Planet or Star in the System per Capital Building Tier
  • Upon converting MSI's ruined warship into a habitat, it is immediately colonised
  • Void Dweller empires now get +50% jobs from habitat districts. This does not currently include scaling jobs from zones, but should in the future.
  • Voidborne AP and Void Dweller origins now give Habitat District cost reduction
  • Void Dwellers now get Civilians on game start
  • Added a Hydroponics Zone for Habitats
• Building and Zone Changes:
  • Replaced the Early Industry Zone with the Urban Zone. The Urban Zone currently accepts all buildings, limitations will be added in a future update
  • Default starting planets now have Basic Offices and Basic Research Labs buildings in addition to the Basic Factories
    • Basic Factories provide Laborer jobs and can be upgraded into either Alloy Foundries or Civilian Industries
    • The Primitive Factory no longer decreases the Job Efficiency of Bureaucrats, Physicists, Biologists and Engineers
    • Basic Offices provide Administrator jobs and can be upgraded into Administrative Offices or Temples
    • Basic Research Labs provide Researcher jobs and be upgraded into Research Labs. These Researchers are worse than Researchers from 3.14.
  • Administrative Offices now provide Bureaucrat jobs and no longer require a Unity Zone
  • Alloy Foundries now provide Metallurgist jobs and no longer require an Industry or Foundry Zone
  • Anglers now have a unique zone on wet worlds.
  • Civilian Industries now provide Artisan jobs and no longer require an Industry or Factory Zone
  • Research Labs now provide Physicists, Biologists and Engineers and no longer require a Research Zone
  • Temples now provide Priest jobs and no longer require a Unity Zone
  • The Autochthon Monument no longer requires a Unity Zone
  • The food processing facility building now gives some base farmer jobs.
  • Uncapped rural districts now support the correct zones
  • Zones now display an icon and tooltip stating that they provide building slots
  • Zones now have auto-generated tooltips stating the jobs that they provide
  • Adjusted job counts of Districts and Zones
  • Converted the Order's Demense to a unique zone for KotTG
    • Scaling Knight jobs are now given by Squires, instead of the Order's Keep. You will no longer get thousands of Knights from keeping the entire galaxy's population as livestock.
• Capital Buildings no longer state that they provide building slots.
• City Districts no longer state that they provide Building Slots
• Jobs are now filled in a more breadthwise manner - weighting still affects job preferences, but pops will attempt to fill all jobs of a strata instead of focusing exclusively on their dream jobs. Somebody still has to make the Consumer Goods even if you had your heart set on being a Physicist.
  • The intent of this is to alter the “land rush” when new jobs open up and to prevent certain economic death spirals. Let us know how it works out for you.
• Mastercrafter civics now provide extra consumer goods and trade to artisan jobs
• Rebalanced biologist jobs for normal empires
• Rebalanced Engineer jobs
• Reworked Artisan sub-jobs
• Fixed the modifier icon for some researcher modifiers not showing
• Researcher sub-jobs no longer show that they provide 0 naval capacity
• Increased the base Consumer Goods income for empires that use Consumer Goods
• Increased the food (or equivalent) and consumer goods income of default countries
• Laborer jobs are now Specialists that produce Alloys and Consumer Goods
• Rebalanced physicist jobs for normal empires
• More progress on the planetary UI.
• New Look for the District boxes in the Planet Summary Screen.
• Removed sound effect when interacting with enclaves
• Revamped initial tutorial events
• Move planetary automation button in planet surface tab

Modding Notes​

• Added documentation for new district_planet_modifier and triggered_district_planet_modifier modifiers for Zones
• Orbital and Planet Deposits now support habitat_modifier, which as you might expect from the name, applies a static modifier to the habitat(s) in the system.

How Do I Opt Into the Beta?​

1. Turn off your mods. They will almost certainly cause you to crash.
2. Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "stellaris_test - 3.99.3 Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown.

The 3.99.0, 3.99.1, and 3.99.2 Open Beta branches will also remain available. If you are having issues accessing the latest version of the 3.99.* Open Beta, please see this forum post for troubleshooting.

For more information on the Open Beta, as well as the intentions and goals of releasing such an early, unpolished version, please see this dev diary.

We also have a new feedback survey this week, which looks at first impressions of the planet UI and rework. We know it's not in a finished or releasable state, but want your feedback regardless.

This week's Open Beta feedback survey is available here!​

 

[Eladrin]

It's nice that you're working on the update, but I'd like at least a little bit of news about the new dlc.

Patience. It will come in time.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Did you mean "scaling jobs from pops" there?

Scaling Jobs from Zones, sorry about that, I blame not having enough coffee.

 

[Eladrin]

Come on, round up please. Resource deposits with a base value of 3 are somewhat rare, it would be nice if they actually meant something for habitats.

We'd probably drop the "+1" if we were rounding up.

Awesome. Would you recommend we still stick to UNE/CoM or would you like feedback focused more on habitats? I will have time to test out one this weekend perhaps.

The further you get from vanilla humans, the more likely it is that you'll find some weird behavior, but more normal empires (non-gestalt, non-megacorp) should be mostly functional as long as they don't have especially unusual civics or starting conditions.

Void Dwellers should be semi-functional enough to get feedback in this build.

 

[MrFreake_PDX]

Is it intended, that some origins dont start with the technology, they should have? I mentioned that Remnants start without Archeostudies tech (also without Archeostudies Institute build, however I expect this one as intended, due to districts/buildings changes in beta).

Most origins still aren't updated to the new system yet.

 

[Eladrin]

I like that you're improving them each patch, but what problem are you trying to solve with zones?

It seems like every good effect of zones can be replicated by just giving buildings a type, adding a maximum per type (IE max 3 mining buildings), and adding district types so jobs can all scale off districts while modified by buildings.

One of the primary intents of zones is to provide more long term flexibility to the development of planets. Not all of that potential will be reached in the initial implementations where we're trying to make the systems similar to the 3.x economy.

Benefits that we see include:

1. More ability to customize your Urban Districts. Where before you had City Districts and Industrial Districts, with a designation toggle to switch your Industrial Districts between Forge and Factory, we no longer need to create extremely specialized zones for other resources - you can make your picks yourself. Want Research and Unity? Go for it.
2. Use that to create unique Zones based on planetary features, to make different planets feel more interesting and unique. In one of next week's beta updates, the Betharian Fields planetary feature will let you shift miner output from Minerals to Energy as a prototype of this. I expect we'll have a lot more as we take advantage of the system more in 4.1/4.2.
3. Create a clearer distinction between Districts and Buildings. (Though admittedly we've backed off on this a bit.) Districts provide jobs, Zones change which jobs, Buildings modify jobs.

Amenities shouldn't be a Zone though. The beta's shown that clearly enough already - they need to be provided in a different manner