by Eldarin
Hello, Stellaris Community!
The massive 4.0.22 update went live this morning with the following changes and improvements:
4.0.22 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.
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.
Improved planet modifier tooltips so they display a better source than "From Buildings”
The Technological Ascendancy AP now unlocks research policies allowing you to increase the draw weight for technology categories
Added Research Restriction policies, allowing you to massively reduce the chance of drawing dangerous technologies (for example if you want to use automated research without researching these technologies).
Added the Refactored Restrictions to the Ethical Guideline Refactoring GalCom resolution, which increases the draw chance for dangerous and rare technologies.
Added demands to the Technologist faction pertaining to Research Restriction policies.
Being humiliated by the Materialist Fallen Empire while undertaking Cosmogenesis will lock you into the “Restrictions Imposed” policy for up to 10 years, significantly decreasing the chance of drawing Cosmogenesis-related technologies.
Updated modifiers that affected the cost or upkeep of both buildings and districts to instead affect planetary infrastructure cost or upkeep (which includes buildings, districts and district specializations).
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)
Substantially increased the base Command Limit of fleets and most sources of Command Limit. We know you were going to doomstack those fleets anyway.
The Charismatic and Repugnant traits (and their robotic, cybernetic and overtuned equivalents) now additionally provide job efficiency modifiers for elite strata and bio-trophy jobs. Go forth and pamper the galaxy's most adorable creatures!
Decreased amenities granted by housing buildings
Reactor Boosters now give a percentage boost to reactor output.
Later growth stages of biological ships now have an inherent reactor output percentage boost.
Rebalanced trade policies for regular empires.
Wealth Creation: 50% Trade, 50% Energy.
Consumer Benefits: 50% Trade, 25% Consumer Goods, 25% Conversion Tax.
Marketplace of Ideas: 50% Trade, 25% Unity, 25% Conversion Tax.
Trade League: 50% Trade, 15% Energy, 15% Consumer Goods, 15% Unity, 5% Conversion Tax.
Holy Covenant: 50% Trade, 37.5% Unity, 12.5% Conversion Tax.
Mutual Aid: 25% Trade, 20% Energy, 20% Minerals, 20% Food, 15% Unity.
Strategic Resource and planetary special feature balancing:
Assorted planetary features that gave rare crystals or exotic gases from technicians now apply to miners or farmers respectively
Added new District Specializations for strategic resources and some special features:
Rare Crystal Extraction district specialization to Mining Districts
Volatile Motes Harvesting district specialization to Generator Districts
Exotic Gas Capture district specialization to Agricultural Districts
Central Spire district specialization for the Urban Districts of certain Relic Worlds
The industrial sector planetary feature on relic worlds now gives +6 farming district capacity
The Betharian Processing district specialization now gives additional miner jobs to the mining districts.
Reduced the strategic resources production of industrial jobs from refineries, chemical plants and crystal plants.
Reduced the strategic resources production of industrial jobs from ancient refineries.
Increased the minor artifact cost of the ancient refinery.
Increased strategic resource cost and upkeep for several research buildings.
Further adjustments on strategic resource balancing.
Refinery buildings now add +0.25 strategic resource income to industrial jobs at the cost of 1.25 minerals or 2 food.
Mote Harvesters, Gas Extractors and Crystal Mines now give +0.5 strategic resource income to rural jobs instead of +1.
The Nanite Transmuter and Dimensional Replicator have had their outputs and upkeep roughly doubled.
Logistics Drones now give a base output of 6 trade and 500 amenities per 100 jobs (was 4 trade and 250 amenities) however they now have an upkeep of 2 energy (for machine empires) or 2 minerals (for hive empires)
Increased both the base job weight for Logistics Drones and the job weight when a planet is low in amenities.
Significantly increased the base amenity production of the Deployment Post (the capital building for newly colonised planets by machine intelligences)
Relic world dense ruins now give -25% district capacity instead of -6 district capacity.
Some more polish for the Resort World
Nanotech research facilities now have a planet cap of 6.
Nanotech researcher job swaps now have innate nanite upkeep.
Nanotech research facilities now only affect engineering jobs.
The Situation Progress awarded for Evolutionary Predator Empires when they discover alien genetic material in events now increased the situation progress by 5%, 10% and, 20% rather than static values.
Slavery Updates for non-Slaver Guild empires: Unemployed Slaves intentionally do not demote into Civilians, but remain as Unemployed pops in the Worker stratum. They do not gain additional happiness penalties beyond those they already have due to being enslaved. Unemployed Slaves can now auto-migrate without requiring a Slave Processing or Transit Hub building. Slaves in Domestic Servitude will continue to take Servant jobs instead of becoming unemployed, but will not auto-migrate.
Increased the thresholds for "Rising Unemployment" events. Unemployed Slaves do not contribute to "Rising Unemployment" events. (They're not upset at not being forced into the mines.)
Added Coastal Hamlets district specialization for empires that are both Anglers and Agrarian Idyll. These give Angler, Pearl Diver and Trader jobs (50 jobs of each type) and accept both Agriculture and Urban buildings. The starting Aquaculture district specialization is replaced with this if you have Agrarian Idyll.
Subterranean Urbanization district specialization now grants 75 miner and 75 trader jobs per district (up from 50 of each)
Aquaculture district specialization now grants 75 angler and 75 pearl diver jobs per district (was 100 anglers)
Agrarian Villages district specialization now grants 75 farmers and 75 traders jobs per district (up from 50 of each) all cases
Harmonised triggers for draw weights for farming technologies
Halved the benefits from mutagenic spas/lubrication basins civics and doubled the penalties.
The Charismatic and Repugnant traits (and their robotic, cybernetic and overtuned equivalents) now additionally provide job efficiency modifiers for elite strata and bio-trophy jobs. Go forth and pamper the galaxy's most adorable creatures! (For real this time)
Increased job weight for genomic researchers
Knights of the Toxic God balancing:
Knight Jobs now receive a 15% base upkeep increase everytime they unlock a quest reward that increases their base unity or research output
The impact of knight jobs on the speed of the Quest situation has been reduced from 0.5 to 0.2
Squire jobs now also grant a slight increase to the upkeep of Knight jobs
The Environmental Integration tradition now gives a maximum habitability of 175% for species with the Mutagenic Habitability trait by default.
Mutation Authorities now allow all Organic species to reach a maximum habitability of 175%.
Mutation Authorities combined with the Environmental Integration tradition now allow all Organic species to reach a maximum habitability of 250%.
Halved the effects of Species Genetic Purity for the following: Job Efficiency (Eugenic Hierarchy), Happiness (Phenotypical Autonomy), Trade (Organic Syndicate), Unity (Purity Paradigm), Leader Lifespan and XP Gain (Biotic Dominion and Phenotypical Autonomy), Council Agenda Speed (Eugenic Hierarchy).
Increased the Trade per 100 Pops from the Spare Organs trait for Organ Usury to 0.5
Basic Cloaking Field Generator no longer require exotic gases
Advanced Cloaking Fields technology now requires access to exotic gases
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.
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.
Fixed unused portraits blocking custom prescripted countries from being considered for spawning
Fixed Pop group modifiers of Deposits not being handled
Fixed specimens not filling exhibits when room is made
Fixed bioships designs with the same name being exploitable
Fixed GDF alloy cost reduction not working
The Spare Organs species trait will no longer interfere with Envoy assignment. Death now relieves them from their duties.
Purging now properly disables regular pop upkeep because we really don't budget for the dead
Fleet that are fighting are no longer eligible for special project requirements
Civilians will now be properly used in the Lathe
Updated Synaptic Reinforcement and Industrial Maintenance edicts to account for 4.0 changes.
Robots no longer benefit from Cloning Vats
Fixed the Housing tooltip not correctly showing district modifiers
Fixed Buildings modifiers not being calculated at game start
Fixed some duplicated entries of haruspex occurring from spiritualist federations
Wilderness empires now have a fallback if their capital buildings are deleted during the monthly tick.
Updated the Chronicle Drones production tooltip to reflect that they no longer produce amenities.
The Lethal Ecosphere blocker will no longer require a technology to clear, cleaning up the technology view.
Leviathan Parades should now have the name of the beastie you killed in the title again.
Fixed a few more cases in which pops that should be bio-trophies weren't be pampered correctly (for example refugees that were insisting that they were being purged)
Pops resettled to the Synaptic Lathe should no longer retain any belief that they still belong to any social stratum that isn't being part of a computer
Stasis Wardens no longer scale their own or Civilian workforce into infinity and beyond
Dramatically increased the weight for Offspring Drones, meaning that your planets are more likely to employ them and avoid the negative modifier.
Fixed Pirate Events not spawning pirates
Artisan Drones now have a food upkeep instead of a mineral one if you have a Catalytic Processing Civic.
Fixed the space time anomaly saying it converted physicists into dimensional researchers.
Added volatile mote cost and upkeep for alloy reclamation plant.
Fix commercial pacts saving their last month value incorrectly, leading to them sometimes not giving any trade value
Removed duplicated entry in clone vats upkeep causing them to cost 45 food per month instead of 30.
Script profiler no longer collects data for ship logistics if it does not actually do the calculations
Fix the presapients of Gestalt Genesis Guides not all joining the Conserved Fauna job
Popgroups will now have portraits other than the default one
The cap for the number of armies supported by a species is now one per 100 pops instead of one per pop to match the 4.0 pop counts.
Fixed farming districts on relic worlds that went missing from the open beta.
The behemoth superweapon now correctly turns ecus into relic worlds.
Ship Experience Mult modifier now works as expected
Mindless robots are no longer eligible for social welfare
Fix commercial pacts saving their last month value incorrectly, leading to them sometimes not giving any trade value
Removed duplicated entry in clone vats upkeep causing them to cost 45 food per month instead of 30.
Implemented loc fix for Warform recruitment dialogue uses "reparations" instead of "repairs"
fixed formatting issues in several tooltip text: Stalwart Network civic description, message in outliner for starbase upgrade, removed unnecessary quotation mark for research points
Fixed edge case with has_active_building Alien Zoo Building checks
Fixed some GalCom modifiers tooltips
Technocracy Civic now mentions you start the game with an additional Scientist
Fixed a case that would let people stack behemoth eggs on top of ruined ones
Luminary Leaders no longer get Backup Clones as they interfered with the Origin
Growth modifiers from Traits and Strata don't scale on Pop group size squared anymore
Multiple auto modding traits will now work together.
Fix ships with a jump drive being able to use bypasses they shouldn't and getting stuck
Fixed megastructure resource harvesting not always being shown even though it was happening
Fixed armor for biological ships displaying the regen values for shields in tooltips
Added a missing 'a' to a seven-year-old localization string.
Updated Synaptic Reinforcement and Industrial Maintenance edicts to account for 4.0 changes.
Fixed awoken Fallen Empires not expanding
The Nothing to See Here Achievement now requires you to have a cloaked military fleet in your enemies capital, a science ship will not do!
Fixed titans for biological shipsets sometimes not having ship names.
Improved AI budgeting of titans for biological shipsets.
Hard Reset Origin, "Machine of War" event text correctly references planet.
Fallen Empire robotic assembly techs now take into account your policy on robots
Fallen Empire robotic assembly techs now require you to have invented robomodding
Re-introduced the effect description for the Ministry of Acquisition, Energy, and Extraction
Getting the Genetic Entertainment event multiple times should now properly only generate 3 options.
Setting Slaves to Livestock should now force them into their new "job".
Slaves should be less likely to get stick in a "repurposing" job.
Unemployed Slaves should now appear in the Worker stratum as Unemployed Slaves instead of disappearing entirely.
The tooltip explaining automatic migration has been updated to the way it works in 4.0.
Fix Contingency not finishing off Planets after destroying starbases
Fixes triggered planet modifiers not applying properly (like Budding)
reanimated_ship_fire_rate_mult and space_fauna_ship_fire_rate_mult should be applied the same way as ship_fire_rate_mult
Fix Happiness modifier from Factions not always being applied
Fixed Penal Colony giving the non-existant "Warden" job. Instead it gives enforcers per pops.
Ships gained from the Cultist event ship will no longer be unable to be destroyed.
Fixed progenitor hive debuff applying for lacking offspring if the nest is in a district where the workforce automated district
Colossi equipped with the Devolving Beam can no longer target Contingency Worlds if you lack the Archaeo-Engineers AP.
Living Metal Mega-Construction Insight empire modifier no longer shows a placeholder icon.
Fixed AI weights for determining if a job was amenities focused or not.
When reverse-engineering minor artifacts, the Affluence Emporium, Omnivident Administration, and Robot Manufacturing Nexus are blocked for empires that cannot construct them
The tooltip for the Shattered Ring origin now explicitly tells the player about the habitability decreasing blockers.
Fixed issues with industrial job refinery modifiers.
Fixed Flash Forge Hyper Relay not working.
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
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.
Fixed Reanimators and Bio-repurposing custom debris
Reworked how the AI calculates shipyards, if all their shipyards get occupied during a war they will attempt to build a new one when next building a starbase.
Stability and Performance
Fixed an OOS at reconnect related to the bureaucrat job
Fixed OOS related to Specimens and Exhibits
Several OOS Fixes including one Num_Pop_Groups OOS
Fixed an OOS when a client uses a different language from the host
Fixed CTD related to specimens
Fixed another OOS at reconnect
OOS fix related to bombardment and ground combat
Potential OOS fix related to Grand Archives
Fixed undefined behavior in planetary construction (potentially leading to CTDS:s and OOS:s) of Districts and Zones as well as replacing/upgrading/repairing Buildings, Districts and Zones.
Fixed crash when using the "Alerts.ShowAll" console command.
Fixes OOS due to ship construction time is calculated to 0 on client but correct on server
Improved the logic that checks for hidden Cutholoids
Fixed OOS with ship positions due to combat.
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.
Reduced amount of calculations and allocations in ship logistics calculation
Reduced amount of calculation for handling/building of data used for ship/component target selection in combat.
Optimized the script side calculations of biomass. Non Wilderness empires will no longer try to tally up their citizens as potential biomass reserves.
Fixed potential crash when finishing terraforming process
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.
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.)
Added alert settings to the settings menu.
Removed "Filter by Type" from message settings.
Fixed situation alerts showing the wrong severity based on current stage.
Abbreviate big faction pop numbers
Automation Building building asset won't leave its frame anymore
Fixed the description of entries in the situation log sometimes being empty
Building Assets are now centered instead of being anchored to the top right corner.
Improve tooltip for using a bypass when unable to do so
Fix Armies tooltip missing the actual upkeep and only showing its details
Fix overlap in Outliner's army entries
All District Backgrounds assets now share the same height
Fixed some inconsistent highlighting in tooltips of the topbar
Large species selection buttons in the species list will no work even when hovering over some other tooltip triggering UI element inside the button.
Reduced modifier calculations on ships
Fixed some inconsistent highlighting in tooltips of the topbar
Fix Prev/Next Planet and Move Capital buttons not always updating correctly in the Planet view
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
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.
should_add_ship_to_debris now uses growth stages instead of designs
Added overlay_icons for districts which displays sprites overlaid on the district icon.
Added support overrides for district grid boxes and district backgrounds
Add _max_mult modifiers and rename _max to _max_add
Added federation_modifier option to crisis perks.
Buildings, districts and district specializations don't need triggered descs for job descriptions, they are now automatically generated
Fixed create leader effects not adding traits in some cases if randomize_traits is true.
Create leader effects now correctly add pending trait selections if randomize_traits is false.
Create leader effects no longer ignore levels in the traits list if randomize_traits is false.
traits in the create leader effects now support random_negative and random_common.
No longer check prerequisites for traits in create leader effects (except for random traits).
Re-added support for "add_trait = " syntax for leaders.
Added divide_over_pop_groups support for triggered planet modifiers. So that modifiers can be used that apply for the pops instead of always being divided by the pop groups
Added automated_workforce support to the num_assigned_jobs trigger
Added the habitability_ceil_uncapped_add modifier, allowing species that benefit from the species_has_uncapped_habitability_on_planet game rule to have habitability above the HABITABILITY_CEIL_UNCAPPED define.
Please continue letting us know if you run into any major issues, especially when it comes to AI and multiplayer stability.
Today I want to talk about some of our goals and provide a comprehensive look at the new Planet UI that will be coming in the 4.1 “Lyra” update alongside Shadows of the Shroud.
Looking Back and Looking Forward
The 4.0 Phoenix update was an extremely ambitious undertaking, intended to lay the foundation for the future of Stellaris. Large foundational updates are very disruptive, and I drastically underestimated the amount of time it would take to get things back into proper shape following this one. These systematic reworks, however, will allow us to expand and improve the game for years to come. This is only the beginning.
Stellaris has several parallel development tracks. The Custodians on the core team remain primarily focused on improving and optimizing the base game experience. This structure proved especially valuable during this release cycle, as our partners at Abrakam were able to step in and assist with the Planet UI, something I’ll be showing off next.
Continuing to refine the systems from 4.0 remains at the top of our priority list, with the goal of meeting your expectations. As I said back in Dev Diary #361:
Fundamentally, as the players, Stellaris is your game.
Your feedback has helped make Stellaris the leading Sci-Fi 4X Grand Strategy Game, and it’s what will carry us into the next era of development. The Wilderness Open Beta was a success thanks to everyone who took part, giving us the chance to experiment while maintaining a quick release cadence over the summer. The 4.0.22 release was vastly improved because of your contributions.
Internally, I’m currently experimenting with some major changes to ships with a focus on improving performance, which - if they look promising in our internal tests - I plan on bringing to you as our next Open Beta later on during the 4.1 cycle. Like the Technology and Combat Open Betas, this will let us try changes without disrupting the main branches and may be discarded or revamped if we don’t like how it’s turning out or if they cause issues. I’ll keep you all updated on the state of the experiments and share more details in another dev diary, and like the Wilderness changes, your reactions will help determine whether or not we keep them.
The 4.1 “Lyra” Update
The next major Stellaris update will be the 4.1 “Lyra” update.
Lyra represents the Lyre of Orpheus, who in Greek mythology enchanted both enemies and beasts with his melodies, descending into the underworld to rescue his late wife, Eurydice. Hades himself was moved by his song, and let him take Eurydice with him on the condition that she walk behind him, and that he never look back. His tale ended tragically, his faith faltering just steps from the surface, and Eurydice was lost to him forever.
Making questionable pacts with potentially malevolent entities felt especially fitting for a release paired with Shadows of the Shroud, which completes our ‘Arc of Ascension’ by exploring the Shroud and Psionic Ascension. It’s still too early to go into detail, though. We’ll be introducing Shadows of the Shroud next week.
At this time, we do not yet have a date to announce for the 4.1 release, but I still want to start talking about what’s going to be in it.
Planet View Improvements
[Note: Steam upload size limits means we had to compress these GIFs. To see them in their full glory, please [/i]visit this post on the Paradox Forums.]
There have been a number of requests to reorganize some of the information and buttons on the planet view UI, and we’ve tried to improve the general flow of some common actions.
The new planet UI is wider than the current one, making better use of the space available for most Stellaris players while still remaining usable on our lowest resolutions.
On the Surface tab this extra space is filled with the Planet Summary that was previously on the Management tab, and the Build Queue is once again permanently visible. Constructing a building will advance to the next open building slot and will no longer close the building list. Decisions and Terraforming have also moved over to this tab.
The Management tab now contains a better breakdown of pop groups with a collapsible list that is first grouped by Species, then Stratum, then individual Pop Groups. We’ve added a Monthly Pop Summary that includes the Growth, Migration, and Assembly that occurred the previous month, and pie charts have returned.
Pie charts throughout the planet view will also highlight their segments when you hover over different elements.
The biggest changes on the Economy tab are better use of space, the addition of the summary in the top right, and vastly improved tooltips. Hovering over a job will now show full production information rather than partial (in the older UI many tooltips only showed pop based upkeep and production rather than combining their inherent values and their job based values.)
Job tooltips now show complete production and upkeep information for both the job and the pops involved.
The Armies and Holding tabs remain mostly unchanged, but with the extra space available, Recruitment no longer needs to be a pop-out tab to list the available armies.
There are a number of other changes coming in 4.1, such as the addition of an “Organic” trait to make food consuming pops more explicit and allow us to simplify a ridiculous number of triggered upkeep checks, and continued bugfixing and work on stability and performance.
What’s Next?
Next week we will begin to breach the mysteries of the Shroud, revealing some of what’s coming in Shadows of the Shroud and providing a dev diary schedule for its features.
See you then!