by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We've updated the 4.5 Open Beta branch with some improvements.

Stellaris 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta Update 5 Release Notes

Feature​

• Flag emblems are now correctly centered within the Empire's Flag hexagon frame

Improvement​

• Starbase, Orbital Ring, and Waystation weapon modules are now weapon-type-specific (lasers, mass drivers, swarmer missiles, particle launchers, psionic torpedoes, scourge missiles, and several strike-craft hangars), each gated by the matching weapon technology and automatically upgrading to your latest tier.

• The Starbase Weapon Preference policy now includes Explosive and Strike Craft options, and automated station designs build the weapon modules matching the chosen preference (or follow the fleet's Weapon Preference when set to Match Fleet).

• Nomad empires can now benefit from the Composer of Strands, Whisperers in the Void, and End of the Cycle Greatest Patron accords, with Arkship-appropriate rewards.

• Adaptive Evolution approach effect will be displayed as an active situation effect instead of just in the tooltip over the approach selection button.

• Overall pass to faction and ethic attractions, improving behaviors for small pop groups and concurrent factions

• Promoting or suppressing a faction has an impact on its attraction

• Factions with the same ethics can be promoted and suppressed separately

Balance​

• The Cradle of Souls maximum-intensity aura surge has been reworked. It no longer builds defence platforms; instead every empire with systems in the aura gains Trust and a chance at a Favor, subjects gain Loyalty, Federation members gain Cohesion, and the patron's own colonies gain a crime or deviancy reducing "Cradle's Serenity". The passive starbase fire-rate bonus is removed.

• The Instrument and Cradle Chosen psionic leader traits now grant applicable bonuses to Gestalt and Nomad empires instead of slave-workforce, faction, and friendly-territory bonuses they could not use.

• All ships and cloned space fauna that have a mineral cost can no longer be built if your Operational Reserves are critical

• The Synthetic Awareness luminary trait now grants +15% Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops instead of +25% Resources from Jobs.

• Each faction now gains attraction in empires holding the secondary ethic it is associated with

• Pops no longer favor their current faction when evaluating which faction to join

• Pops of another species can now join the Supremacists, at a reduced attraction

• A faction losing its potential members is now destroyed after a delay instead of immediately

• Progressive, Prosperity and Totalitarian attraction now depends on citizenship rights instead of the Pop's species

• The Dimensional Manipulator now grants a fixed number of 5 districts instead of a 33%

Bugfix​

• Spell checked localization files

• Corrected an error that crept into the Seddom system in Chinese localization (Once again 复合子个体的演示)

• Fixed hostility between countries sometimes not updating immediately when it is set in script.

• Nomads can now annihilate each other in Machine Uprising wars.

• Automated and auto-completed ship designs that lack reactor power now reduce their strike craft alongside weapons, instead of leaving hangars untouched and stripping shields and armor to pay for them.

• A component swapped in while an automated design was balancing its power is no longer charged to the power budget twice, so fewer utilities are given up than the shortfall requires.

• Fixing Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when taking control of a Settled Empire's Starbase.

• Fixed the "Distribute Luxury Goods" colony decision not going on cooldown, which let it be re-used repeatedly to refresh its effect. It is now unavailable for the 10-year duration of the Luxuries Distributed modifier.

• Fixed metallurgist jobs on the Foundry Arkship zone always paying their extra upkeep in minerals. Empires with Catalytic Processing now correctly pay it in food instead.

• Fixed orbital ring weapon modules all reporting the wrong sabotaged component after an enemy Sabotage Starbase operation.

• Nomadic Empires can now be reborn as an exiled colony after failing the "End of the Cycle" situation.

• The Gravitational Centrifuge that was non-functional on Deep Space Citadels and Orbital Rings can no longer be built on these structures

• The Calling of Arms now properly considers ship size when building ships

• Defeating the Mutant Hordes before they could take over your colony no longer flag the planets for purging

• Fixed a case of Treasure Hunters being blocked if they were in the process of researching Gateway Activation after defeating the voidworms guarding Ness's gate

• Forever Cruise Gestalts can now properly upgrade their service districts

• Fixed Defender of the Galaxy crisis defeated counter not properly updating when a crisis was vanquished before ambition level 5 was reached.

• Adjusted tooltip for unavailable mercenary enclave fleets.

• Contracts that time out from no fault of the issuer, now display a clearer notification about it.

• The second level of the Scout trait no longer refers to military fleets.

• Arkships no longer automatically benefit from the "Foreign Occupation" Planetary Revolt situation modifier when crossing another empire's border.

• The Great Pyramid event chain no longer displays a broken tooltip.

• Simplified the list of available Tyanki sizes.

• The Machine Uprising event will now trigger a Nomadic Machine Empire to spawn for Nomadic Empires.

• Restored the missing scrollbar in the starbase Shipyard, Army Hub, Defenses, and Critters lists.

• Nomad Vassals now correctly inherit Operational Reserves

• Added 5 missing dlc locks to focus tasks

• The Eater of Worlds Digest now counts Nomad Arkship colonies in its tally.

• The End of the Cycle Creation Accord no longer grants Nomad empires a colonized planet they cannot hold. Nomads now receive a newly materialized Arkship of a type they have researched.

• Fixed some planets being impossible to consecrate.

• Fixed the adSalivul habitat having a broken string instead of the correct name.

• Fix occasional crash when hovering over a leader to view their traits

• The Supremacists no longer appear at all in Pacifist empires, instead of existing without being joinable

• Persistent factions now survive without members and ignore the potential member thresholds as intended

• The Manifesti now accepts only Egalitarian, Pacifist and Xenophile Pops as intended

• Factions no longer suffer an attraction penalty for lacking a leader

• Existing faction types that do not use their guiding ethic as a Pop filter no longer use it as a growth factor

• The ethic growth factor no longer applies while a faction is losing Pops

• Negative Pop Ethics Shift Speed modifiers are no longer ignored, and -100% or lower now fully suppresses ethics shift

• Fixed Tomb World Environment art.

• Adjusted assets for Humanoid City Set.

• Arkhships should no longer get deleted by Cetana's storm

• Arkships should no longer be targeted instead of the proper planet in the Phaseshift even chain

• Fixed an instance of No Category pops stemming from Virtuality and Gia'Zumon interacting strangely

• Fixed Hunker Down decision and Storm Manipulation buildings being broken for Storm Chasers

• Nomadic Driven Assimilator purge vassals now Assimilate Hive-Minded pops when their Overlord has taken Inevitable Assimilation (or another tradition that unlocks Hive-Minded Assimilation), instead of being forced to purge them.

• The bonus Unity, Society Research, and Engineering Research from the Driven Assimilator's Cybernetic Advantage tradition is now gained when a purge vassal carries out the Assimilation.

• Galactic Nemesis empires now gain Menace from the "Purge or Assimilate Pops" objective for pops Assimilated by their purge vassals, matching the credit already granted for pops they purge.

• Cyber Hive purge vassals now Assimilate pops into the gestalt consciousness as their Overlord would, and receive the associated Cyber Hive Assimilation bonuses.

• Purge vassals now handle pops as their Overlord would when the Overlord has the Mechromancy or Galactic Nemesis ascension perks, instead of defaulting to a plain purge.

• Fixed size of the Weapon Slots Text Icons

• Blocked Sacred Sites from spawning in Sanctuary Systems

• Fixed a bug where starbase building queues remain locked after controller flip at the end of a war

• Fixed Commercial Pact trade value growing out of control in federations (especially with the automatic Commercial Pact law), where it swung between near-zero and enormous values each month.

• Automated science ships once again spread out to survey different systems instead of all converging on the same one.

• The Anomaly, Archaeological Site, and Astral Rift views now show the assigned scientist while a science ship carries out that task on automation.

• Fixed a case where newly built arkships could get colony events. No you don't have subterraneans living in your soil.

• Fixed numerous events, decisions, and buildings silently failing or producing error log spam for Nomad empires.

• Fixed a Megacorp becoming Galactic Emperor wiping the Trader jobs from its capital.

• Fleets returning from MIA will no longer queue a movement order if they already have other orders.

• Suppressing a faction will not also suppress the ones with the same ethic

• The Nomadic Gameplay toggle now grays out immediately for multiplayer clients when the host has the Nomads DLC disabled, without needing to reopen the Government & Ethics tab.

• Fixed an issue preventing nomadic empires from joining wars

• Fixed the auto-pause setting being ignored when the research complete popup opened.

• Fixed the Shroud policy offering two options that shared the same key, which could select the wrong option and cause save game errors.

• Fixed the terraforming special project resolving against the wrong target instead of the planet being terraformed.

• Fixed army build costs not being shown when building armies at a starbase, along with a related crash.

• Disabled Arkships no longer appear as colonization sources.

• Fixed the species editor button not working if it had already been used on a previously edited empire.

• Fixed special projects on Arkship colonies resolving to the wrong planet scope.

• The species editor now takes opposing traits into account when working out which planet classes a species can live on.

• Fleet settings are now respected by ship upgrade actions and their UI display, and the ship designer no longer opens for ships that have no design template.

• Triggered modifier tooltips now show the correct value. The displayed number ignored the modifier's multiplier, though the applied value was always correct.

• The Gundersen Research Society now shows its custom start text instead of generic Lost Colony text.

AI​

• Fleet composition is now driven by the empire's active fleet doctrine and weapon preference, replacing the previous fixed personality- and civic-based ship ratios.

• Crisis and ascension hulls are now favored in fleet composition once unlocked.

UI/UX​

• Fixed Contract notification toasts (accepted, completed, abandoned, failed) showing a redundant empire name and a stray line break in their titles.

• Fixed the Technologist faction's "AI Allowed" demand description being cut off; it now reads as a complete sentence.

• Pop group entries now display every faction of the empire, graying out the ones the group cannot join

• New faction tooltips explaining membership, attraction, join conditions and why a Pop Group cannot join

• Clarified the ethic and faction membership recap wording

• Reorder guiding ethic tooltip to always display the secondary ethic after

• Subject agreement terms no longer show empty category headers.

• Added the missing War status filter to the galaxy map.

• Fixed the Decisions tooltip on the planet view.

• The fleet upgrade icon is no longer hidden in fleet summary entries when many fleets are listed.

• Volcanic Planets now showcase correct sky assets

Performance​

• Daily faction update now evaluates Pop Group pre-triggers, faction potential triggers and join rules once per update

• Reduced save game size by no longer storing designed empires that are not needed.

• Galactic Community resolutions are now cached rather than recollected during every country modifier update.

Stability​

• Fixes an OOS caused by different ordering of focus category tiers.

• Fixed a crash that could occur during galaxy generation.

Audio​

• Portrait/Paragon remastering - consistent well-balanced volume, all stereo, consistent reverb, minor quality issues fixed.

• Events - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.

• Archaeology / Special Events - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.

• Advisors - Volume made consistent and well-balanced.

• Audio credits updated from First Contact through Nomads.

• Replaced 16 missing Machine Age portrait and Galactic Paragons voice files and corrected their volume.

Modding​

• Added has_aquatic_trait scripted trigger.

• Specifying the same event pre-trigger more than once now logs an error

• Event pre-trigger failures can now be localized through PRE_TRIGGER_FAIL__ keys

• Added the `custom_tooltip_icon` trigger, a `custom_tooltip` variant that always displays pass/fail icons

• Added `pop_ethics_filter`, `use_guiding_ethic_as_growth_factor` and `skip_creation_cooldown` to pop faction types

• Hidden factions are no longer exempt from POP_FACTION_CREATION_COOLDOWN, use `skip_creation_cooldown` instead

• Removed the unused `attraction_custom_title` and `attraction_custom_desc` pop faction type parameters

• Added the `POP_FACTION_DESTRUCTION_DELAY` define, removed `POP_CURRENT_FACTION_WEIGHT`

• Faction attraction scope cleanup and improvements

• set_planet_flag, remove_planet_flag, set_timed_planet_flag and has_planet_flag now also work in colony, carrier, and ship scope (previously planet scope only), operating on the same flag store as the carrier_flag family.

• Faction `on_destroy` now has the destroyed faction in the `From` scope

The rollback branch has also been updated to have 4.5 Open Beta Update 4.

Thanks for helping us with the 4.5 release!