by Eladrin
Hello everyone!
We’re one day early with the dev diary this week, but I wanted to get this out to all of you as soon as possible.
The State of the Release
The Stellaris 4.0 “Phoenix” update and BioGenesis have been released.
BioGenesis is a fantastic expansion and I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished with it, but I have to be honest - like its namesake, the free patch alongside BioGenesis has been a little bit on fire.
During the lead-up to the release, I was confident that we would be able to finish the revamp and clean up the most critical bugs. We fell short of that goal, and we’re committed to continuing to fix things until the 4.0 release is in the state it needs to be in.
While some suggested delaying the release until the game was in better shape, I wanted to keep as much distance as we could from the summer holidays. I was concerned about repeating a 2.2-style situation, where we couldn't provide full support for the game after launch and it remained broken for too long. Like the 2.2 changes, however, I strongly believe that the system changes in 4.0 improve Stellaris and will give us the platform we need to rise from those ashes and grow for years.
I’m incredibly thankful for the passion of our fans and apologize for disappointing you.
Hotfixes and Patches
We’ve spent the week delivering fixes on a daily basis, starting with a same-day hotfix to take care of a crash found by the early access influencers:
Stellaris 4.0.2 Hotfix
Stability
- Fixed crash by preventing the deletion of a ship design that was only present in a build queue
Tuesday morning we fixed a number of the issues you raised, and started getting some performance fixes in:
Stellaris 4.0.3 Patch
Features
- Monthly change in Biomass is now shown in the resource bar for Wilderness empires.
Bugfix
- Fixed some building upgrades being unconstructable or appearing with Planet Cap: 0
- Devouring Wilderness now correctly generates biomass from eating pops
- You will no longer be tasked with making an agricultural district if you are a Wilderness Empire and an Orchard Forest if you are a regular empire.
- The timeline completion and progression popups no longer remain open when the timeline UI is reopened after being closed.
- Fixed shattered rings not showing generator districts
- Fixed some unity buildings being broken
- Fixed politicians having double the resource output they should
- Fixed the bullet points for various species traits
- Fixed empire size from district modifiers being applied twice
- Zookeepers no longer increase the amount of research that other Zookeeper produce scaling with the number of zookeepers. Oops!
- Fixed assembly specialization for machine worlds giving the wrong jobs
- Fixed the council position for worker coop providing the incorrect amount of amenities.
- Wilderness empires can no longer become the Behemoth, they are perfect the way they are.
- Fixed some localization issues with some planetary decisions (English only)
- Fixed some tooltips mentioning regular jobs for wilderness
- Fixed Wilderness colonization button
- Fixed the Avatar Forest's volatile mote upkeep being too high
- Fixed the Thermoclastic Roar using improper syntax for killing pops
- Fixed some biological offspring ships not calling the correct 3d models
- The Order's Demesne should now correctly be swapped for a standard Planetary Defense specialization
- Pre-FTL planets should once again have their buildings
- Wilderness Deposits have been contained and will no longer be spawning across the galaxy. (Fixes systems generating with no resources.)
- Fixed ai megacorps not having an influence budget to build branch office buildings with
- Fixed the tooltip that said how many traders you get from branch office buildings depending on civics (English only)
- Fixed space fauna gauss weapons dealing -100% hull damage
- Fixed biological ship point defense and flak being identical
- Fixed juggernaut fusion reactors being equippable on titans not juggernauts
- The Faculty of Archaeostudies no longer gives broken jobs
- Fixed a planetary deposit making gestalt physicist jobs require consumer goods
- Fixed budding pops making robot assembly plants sometimes stop working
- Empire with the catalytic processing civics now start with additional food districts
- The Catalytic Processing civic now says that Metallurgists are converted into Catalytic Technicians
- Fixed some trait tooltips overstating effects by a factor of 100 (English only)
- Ancient Clone Vats can now be built in any urban district specialization
- Added tooltip description for Wilderness Refining World.
- Virtuality no longer allows an infinite workforce loop
- The experimental ship from the War Fragment now scale
- The experimental ship from the War Fragment no longer drops debris
- You can no longer build the Wilderness Glade holding on unnatural worlds
- The Wilderness can no longer build multiple shield generators, effectively becoming immune to bombardment.
- Fixed numerous buildings sticking around after a Wilderness took over a planet.
- Fixed numerous event buildings not having a biomass cost for Wilderness
- Fixed the First League Filing Office not giving the unity jobs it should have to most empires.
- Physics, Society, and Engineering focused District Specializations now trigger flavor text selection for their District.
- Improved post game Behemoth Behavior
- Fixed biological ships not having logistic upkeep
- Fixed habitats spawning with a broken orbital
- Civilians are now generated with a mix of ethics
- Pops are now created with a randomly selected ethic when appropriate.
- The Ministry of Culture building now says that Bureaucrats are converted into Culture Workers
- The Core focus task "Establish a Branch Office" can now be completed
- Fixed Natural Neural Network maintenance drones
- Fixed Spanish Translation of Precinct Houses
- Fixed all rural districts being destroyed when losing a colony
- Fix to an unemployment tooltip
- Fix issue with colonization on planets, specifically seen on shattered rings
Balance
- Logistic Drones now provide a small amount of amenities
- The Faculty of Archaeostudies now gives minor artifacts from biology/archaeo-engineer jobs if you have the Archaeoengineers AP
- Buffed Prosperity traditions
- Significantly buffed the scientist expertise traits
- Wilderness and Nascent Stage are now incompatible
- Nerfed spawning and assembly specializations for hive and machine worlds
- Rebalanced Natural Neural Network - reduced the research generated, but significantly reduced the additional upkeep
- Correctly put soldier job efficiency modifier on the Military Academy, not the Fortress
- The chance to get the cultist's flagship is now 20% instead of 100%
- Districts for Wilderness Empires now cost 50 Biomass
- The expand planet decision for Wilderness now costs 5×(Planet Size)^2 Biomass and 50 Influence
- Reduced the extra society research from zookeepers
- Civilian ethic outputs have been adjusted
- State Academy now has a planet cap of 3
- Betharian Districts now produce 2 Minerals and 6 Energy by default, rather than just Energy.
AI
- Gave the AI a helper event so they don't leave their starting shattered ring segments uncolonised
- The AI now values buildings that modify production more.
Stability and Performance
- Fixed a crash when exiting to main menu
- Found an issue with Weaver growth auras that was lagging the game:
- The weaver growth auras temporarily affect all ships in the fleet instead of only biological ships capable of growth due to these performance issues, however they no longer apply an upkeep increase.
- Significantly improved how Biomass is calculated
- Improve loading time of late game saves
This morning we deployed the 4.0.4 patch, with fixes to some of the high profile bugs and changes focusing on balance, stability, and performance:
Stellaris 4.0.4 Patch
Balance
- The default Eternal Vigilance policy will now only spawn defensive platforms in orbit of upgraded starbases
- Amenities Updates:
- Logistics drones now produce additional amenities if Instinctive Synchronization is taken
- Luxury Housing, Drone Storage, and Hive Warrens grant 1500 housing and 2500 amenities.
- Paradise Domes, Upgraded Drone Storage, and Expanded Warrens grant 3000 housing and 5000 amenities.
- Communal Housing grants 2000 housing and 3000 amenities.
- Utopian Communal Housing grants 4000 housing and 6000 amenities.
- 100 Entertainers now give 1250 Amenities instead of 1000.
- The Entertainment Forum is again an upgrade to the Holo-Theaters, and grants 400 Entertainer jobs.
- Reverted many of the leader changes:
- Leaders once again gain traits at every level.
- The number of trait picks per level has been set back to 2 by default.
- Low level traits that were merged and buffed remain so.
- It automates:
- Automation buildings upkeep now only scales their upkeep with districts they automate: 8/10 for rural districts, 10/12 for city districts - buildings no longer factor into its upkeep.
- Automation tooltip now mentions the scaling upkeep
- Automation buildings are now associated with Assembly Patterns and Construction Templates technologies
- It automates...even for hives.
- Gestalt Machine Empires can now turn off Migration Controls.
- Maintenance Drones now auto-migrate like the Denizens that they are.
Bugfix
- Fixed space fauna cost values
- Fixed various checks for Offspring Drones that were broken
- Fixed the Permanent Employment civic
- Fixed the planetary supercomputer not having the same modifiers as the research institute
- Fixed the Logistics Hub going missing from the game
- Fixed a broken modifier on the Hive Confluence building
- Fixed telepaths not gaining correct modifiers
- The Clone Army starting event no longer fires twice
- Commercial specialisations now accept all urban buildings
- Fixed BioGenesis not unlocking the crisis tab if you do not own either The Machine Age or Nemesis
- Neglected bio-trophies should now show on the planet UI and have a happiness penalty
- Fixed planetary deposit researcher interactions with gestalt empires
- Maintenance drones now count as better than slaves for assorted checks
- Starting the game as a Nascent Stage Life Seeded empire will no longer leave you with only presapients and immediately game over.
- The opinion penalty for purging pops have been reduced by 100
- The amount of Menace gained from purging pops has been reduced by a factor of 100
- Fixed the Splinter Hive Holding being 100 times more effective than it should have been
- The Coral Portrait now has access to rooted instead of the platypus.
- AI Megacorps will no longer be dirty cheaters that ignore the branch office building limit
- Debris is no longer incorrectly displayed as coming from our own empire.
- Scripted species can now inherit their parent species rights instead of getting default rights
- The Logistics Ceiling setting has been reset to default for everyone since it changed in 4.0
- You may no longer use Fallen empire technology to mine for minerals in the mantle of ringworlds
UI
- The Build District icon is now more clearly labelled.
- Made some adjustments to the Planet UI to hopefully make it clearer when you can build District Specializations.
- The Build Queue will now automatically start opened in the Surface or Management tabs of the Planet View if there is something in the Queue.
- Clearing a blocker will open the Build Queue if it is closed.
- Fixed the diplomatic window showing the city elements based on the ship set instead of the selected city set.
- Fixed some modifiers from jobs being unlocalized in tooltips.
- Fixed being able to disable event messages if their default settings haven't changed.
- The pop totals in the job strata tooltip are now consistent with the strata UI.
- Fixed missing information in tooltips for why you can't upgrade buildings.
Stability
- Added more safeguards around ship graphical culture to avoid a crash
- Fix CTD happening when hovering over some leader traits in the selection UI
- Fix CTD related to districts getting deleted while a specialization was in the build queue
- Fixed crash on startup when generating modifiers (Thanks for helping us find this, More Events Mod!)
- Fixed issue with script killing pops assigned to a job may CTD
- Fixed CTD in colonization view due to invalid deposit entry
- Fixes CTD in planets and sector view due to species
Performance
- Multiple AI performance optimizations
- Reduced memory footprint in growth calculations
- Threaded and cached procreate calculation on pop groups to improve performance
- Reduce calculations done for planet economy
Next Steps
We’re planning a 4.0.5 patch tomorrow with more fixes. Some of the headline features of that one will include fixes to common desyncs affecting multiplayer stability, district tooltips showing the effects specializations have on them, a fix to hive and machine worlds destroying their rural districts upon terraforming, and performance improvements.
Here are some partial patch notes - we’re still working on fixes today so this isn’t comprehensive, and as usual with preliminary patch notes some things may be removed from them or changed based on testing.
Stellaris 4.0.5 Partial Patch Notes
Improvement
- Converting a planet into a hive world or machine world now preserves the generator, mining and farming jobs. Known Issue: The special districts on these planets do not swap names or icons to rural districts.
- Void Dwellers, Aquatics and Cave Dwellers now grant their robots the relevant trait when they invent robots
Bugfix
- Fixed Pearl Divers not mentioning both a food and mineral upkeep in the tooltip
- Fixed some duplicated text on the strong and very strong traits
- Blocked Behemoths from laying eggs in combat
- Fixed the Artifact Relay decision for hive minds
- Fixed the Galactic Market Nomination decision
- Fixed Fanatical Purifiers and Devouring Swarm getting the 'Declare a Rival' Empire Focus
- Bio Titans built in GDF service should now be made of meat and not metal
- Fixes ethics divergence always switching the entire pop group instead of amount
- The Automated Curation Algorithms technology will no longer be offered to Wilderness Empires
- Colonization can not be started again if there's already a colony ship in progress.
- Increased the amount of workforce Wilderness pops gain to 99999, this way if you ever have more than 1000 of a job the wilderness won't start trying to employ pops like a normal empire
- Wilderness Empires will no longer be able to build the automation buildings only to destroy them at the start of the next month
- The Automation Buildings should only show up in a research option once now instead of four times.
- Fixed multiple pre-FTL buildings sticking around after their owners had been invaded
- Advanced AIs now start with some extra unity
- Genocidal Necrophage empires no longer start with a Chamber of Elevation
- Incompatible Cybernetic Creed buildings are removed from the building list when you embrace a Creed
- Finishing Biomorphosis while having 7 tradition trees shouldn't reward a ghost tradition tree
- Fixed the Planetary Supercomputer demanding paperclips
- Permanent Employment now correctly starts with 400 zombies
- Added missing loc from Sanctuary World designation tooltip,
- Scavenger Bot is now named correctly in Timeline Event.
- You can no longer ruin your game-start economy by focusing on astro-mining while using resource consolidation to have no mining stations in your home system (Resource Consolidation and Astro Mining Drones now exclude each other)
- Fix issue where fleet/ship stats were not updated correctly when modifiers changed
- Fix modifiers not having an effect on displayed Fleet Power
- Biomimetic now applies a 50% workforce bonus to roboticist and replicator jobs
- Bodysnatchers now may edit Population Controls, similar to Necrophages.
- The War Fragment will no longer ask you to declare war on empires you have banch offices on. Profit comes first.
- Officials can now get Architectural Focus trait from Resourceful Ascension event
- Eternal Vigilance now also generates Defense Platforms for Deep Space Citadels
- Planet and slave market tooltips will correctly include dystopian specialist jobs into the general specialists list.
- Fixed an issue where if you gained the jump drive tech before researching level 2 and 3 hyperdrives, your science ships and constructors would not be equipped with jump drives
- Fixed a bug that may have sometimes caused pop decline to be determined incorrectly on planets with multiple species.
- Fatal Mutations no longer cause complete planetary extinction
- Pox Bombardment for some weird reason no longer works on mechanical beings
- Armageddon and Pox Bombardment are once again capable of bombing your enemies into the stone-age (tomb-world)
Balance
- Reduced the biomass cost for planetary expansion for wilderness by roughly 50%
- Xenophobic Individualist machines start with an Alloy Foundry instead of a Medical Center
- Further tweaks to the ethics effects of civilians:
- Reduced the happiness for xenophobes and pop upkeep for xenophiles by 50%
- Increased the amenities for pacifists by 10x
- Doubled the trade for egalitarians.
- Habitats now have a Solar Farming Bay specialisation for their Reactor districts, this gives farmer jobs, turning the district into a hybrid energy/food producer.
- Knights OP:
- Halved the number of knight jobs from most sources
- Squires no longer grant the stability of soldiers
- Reduced the Bonus Pop Growth from the Lover's Pox
- Reduced the Stability from Memorialist job swaps
- Updated Scientist Expertise traits
- Assault armies now cost food instead of minerals for empires with biological ships
- Changes to modifiers are now mirrored in the UI immediately, even when paused
- Re-added pop decline alert.
- Improvements to the Build District tooltip
- Now tells you it will Build a District if you can afford it and click on it
- The modifier tooltip on a district will now also account for the modifiers coming from the district specialization.
Stability
- Fixed an OOS after hotjoining due to leader trait assignments
We’re currently trying to track down a memory related issue that causes the game to slow down over time - exiting the game and reloading fixes it as a temporary solution but we’re hoping to get a fix in place in either 4.0.5 or 4.0.6. There are also a couple of desyncs that aren’t listed in there yet.
We’ve had a lot of string changes since our last localization pass, and we recognize that it’s difficult to play with so many English placeholders. 4.0.5 should fix some of the most common issues in Chinese, and early next week we’re planning a patch that will more comprehensively update localization for all non-English languages.
What’s Next?
Tomorrow (May 7th) at 5 PM CEST (8 AM PDT) we have an AMA (“Ask me Anything”) scheduled in /r/Stellaris on Reddit - you can post questions now if you like. We’re also going to be holding a free weekend on Steam starting May 8th, after the 4.0.5 release.
Next week we’ll have the traditional post-release Stellaris Art Blast and more patches and updates - likely not at the pace we’ve kept up this week, but I expect that we’ll probably have two.
Thank you for your patience, and thank you for playing Stellaris.