• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Stellaris Dev Diary #271 - Ready…? Fight!

Hello again!

This week’s topic is the combat rebalancing planned for the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” update. We’ll begin with an exploration of the goals and intended scope of the changes, and then go into detail regarding what we’ve done.

Scope and Intentions​

We first discussed the combat balancing back in Dev Diary #257, and then provided some more information on our early work at PDXCon. Since then, we’ve done more experimentation and gathered some feedback before making more iterative changes.

When we started thinking about doing the Combat Rebalancing experiment, we had to decide what it was, and perhaps just as importantly, what it was not.

Goals​


We decided that the primary goals were to:
  • Shake up the meta and improve general space combat, while maintaining a limited scope.
  • Provide benefits to having mixed fleets rather than unihull.
  • Using the 3D Assets that we have, improve counterplay and ship design options.

Containing the scope of these changes was considered critical - this is intended to be tightly focused on fleet composition and balance changes rather than a massive rewrite of how fleet combat works. We’re also not touching ground combat at this time.

Problems​


Some of the problems that we identified with fleet combat in Stellaris included:
  • “Alpha strike” artillery battleships dominate the late game. We added a bit of rock-paper-scissors when we improved Strike Craft, but due to the way repeatable technologies interact with combat, eventually all that matters is who has longer range.
  • Disengagement mechanics further encourage overkill.
  • Ships like Destroyers and Cruisers fall out of effectiveness almost immediately. The Point Defense niche of Destroyers isn’t very valuable, and almost anything a Cruiser can do, a Battleship can do better.
  • Command Limits don’t really do their intended jobs.
  • Doomstacks aren’t fun.

The last two were deemed out of scope for this round of changes, and will be explored in future updates. We’re also not really touching repeatable technologies at this time, focusing instead on trying to provide useful roles for more ship sizes.

So What Did You Do?​


The biggest changes include:
  • Ship Roles can now be selected to auto-design ships that actually fulfill certain roles, such as Artillery, Brawler, Torpedo, and so on. If you do not possess any weapons that fulfill the selected role, it’ll do its best with what you have.
  • Torpedoes and select other weapons now gain a multiplicative damage bonus based on the size of the target.
    • Missiles have been moved out of the G slot back into S and M.
    • Energy Torpedoes such as Proton and Neutron Launchers have been changed into G class weapons with a minimum range. Damage has been adjusted to be balanced as a Torpedo class weapon, and like the new Torpedoes, they deal increased damage to larger targets. Unlike standard torpedoes, they remain instant hit weapons for now.
  • A new ship size called the Frigate, an advanced Corvette frame that delivers torpedoes, but is slower and less evasive. It's unlocked with the Torpedo technology.
  • Added a minimum range to all Large weapons except Lasers
    • Note: Currently ships do not yet back off if all weapons are unable to fire due to range.
  • Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other.
  • Flak Batteries now more strongly counter Strike Craft, while Point Defense now more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes. Strike Craft are more reliant on Shields, Missiles and Torpedoes are more reliant on Armor. Due to their ability to bypass shields, Strike Craft are very effective against other Strike Craft.
  • Ship combat computers now ignore certain weapons for desired range purposes, and base their desired distance on the actual loadout of the ship. "Swarm" and "Torpedo" behavior will charge in, "Picket" and "Line" behaviors will attempt to stay at the range of their median range weapons, and "Artillery" and "Carrier" will try to stay at the range of their longest ranged weapons.This generally increases the desire for ships to remain at range if possible.
  • Ships now get a limited number of Disengagement Opportunities per combat. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll (except for Psi Jump Drives, which provide 2) once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
  • Some sources of Evasion have been replaced with other effects.
  • Everything else changed. Everything we know is wrong. Panic, and know despair.

A more comprehensive list of changes can be found here:

Note: 3.6.0 patch notes are also to be considered “in Beta”, as they have not undergone the full review normally done before posting. This is hot stuff.

3.5.3 patch notes have also been included in the following list.

This includes (most of the) changes from 3.5.3 and 3.6.0 (beta) as of Oct 10, 2022 14:56:52 +0200

Consider this changelog to be a beta as they have not undergone the full review we normally do before posting them.

Combat Rebalancing​

  • Ship Roles can now be selected to auto-design ships that actually fulfill certain roles, such as Artillery, Brawler, Torpedo, and so on. If you do not possess any weapons that fulfill the selected role, it’ll do its best with what you have.
  • Added a new ship size: Frigates are an advanced form of Corvette specialized in delivering G class weapons.
  • Torpedoes now gain a multiplicative damage bonus to their damage based on the ship size of the target, as do Prethoryn missiles. The Unbidden also get a reduced variant of this.
  • Torpedoes now have a maximum firing arc of 25 degrees.
  • Energy Torpedoes such as Proton and Neutron Launchers have been changed into G class weapons with a minimum range. Damage has been adjusted to be balanced as a Torpedo class weapon, and like the new Torpedoes, they deal increased damage to larger targets. Unlike standard torpedoes, they remain instant hit weapons for now.
  • Some sources of Evasion have been replaced with other effects.
  • Small weapons of a category now have a slightly faster refire rate, Large weapons of a category now have a slightly slower refire rate.
  • Added a minimum range to all Large weapons except Lasers
  • Ship combat computers now ignore certain weapons for desired range purposes, and base their desired distance on the actual loadout of the ship. "Swarm" and "Torpedo" behavior will charge in, "Picket" and "Line" behaviors will attempt to stay at the range of their median range weapons, and "Artillery" and "Carrier" will try to stay at the range of their longest ranged weapons.This generally increases the desire for ships to remain at range if possible.
  • Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other.
  • Flak Batteries now more strongly counter Strike Craft, while Point Defense now more strongly counter missiles and torpedoes. Strike Craft are more reliant on Shields, Missiles and Torpedoes are more reliant on Armor. Due to their ability to bypass shields, Strike Craft are very effective against other Strike Craft.
  • Added Armor Hardening and Shield Hardening modifiers, which reduce armor and shield penetration. Added new aux components that use Living Metal or Zro to provide late game armor and shield hardening.
  • The Destroyer (Interceptor), Cruiser (Gunship), and Battleship (Broadside) stern sections now have an extra Aux slot.
  • Autocannons now have a faster fire rate (and thus are very high damage for their weapon size, but have very short range).
  • Added Medium and Large Autocannons
  • Added nanite autocannons and flak cannons as a reward for killing the scavenger bot.
  • Disruptors and Autocannons are now considered Brawling weapons, with short range but faster attacks.
  • Ships now get a limited number of disengagement opportunities. All current drives provide 1 disengagement roll once the ship takes hull damage below its disengagement threshold, and the Hit and Run war doctrine grants all of your ships an additional attempt. Civilian ships set to evasive will continue to try to disengage with each hit.
  • The Enigmatic Encoder now proves +1 Disengagement Opportunity rather than evasion.
  • Weapon component tooltips now display minimum range and firing arc.
  • Armor components now grant twice as much armor as before. Shield components now grant +50% more than before, but regen remains the same. Hull components grant less than before.
  • Hull Technologies now give 10% hull instead
  • Armor and Hull regen now behave like shields - five times faster outside of combat. (Regen values are now 20% of the previous values for most components.)
  • Defense Platforms no longer have G-slot ship sections.
  • Missiles now fit into S weapon slots and have had their damage modified accordingly, Swarmer Missiles go into M. Torpedoes (and Neutron Launchers) are now the only weapons that fit into the G slot.
  • Adjusted the maximum range of all non-torpedo missiles. Reduces the range of torpedoes.
  • Made XL weapons more likely to target battleships and titans
  • Massively increased the chances to lose or damage ships when a fleet uses emergency FTL to escape a battle.
  • Reduced the time before emergency FTL can be initiated during combat.
  • Ships now attempt to disengage at 25% hull.
  • Ships should try to spread out a little further away from one another in combat.
  • It is no longer possible to kill a dragon by distracting it with a large fleet of transport ships
  • The cap to the Force Disparity bonus for fleets that are significantly outnumbered has been dramatically increased.

Feature​

  • Added an archaeology site in a new solar system with a debris belt
  • Added Ascensionists civic for regular empires and equivalents for hives and machines. Provides +25% planetary ascension effects and -10% costs
  • Added Holy Covenant Federation type and Conclave Federation Election type
  • Added the Cordyceptic Drones civic to hiveminds allowing them to reanimate all organic space fauna.
  • Added various new galaxy shapes, such as 3 and 6 arm spirals, and some more experimental and irregular shapes
  • Galaxies now default to Spiral (2-Armed) rather than Elliptical. Tiny Galaxies now support Spiral (2-Armed) galaxies.
  • Added a new tradition tree (Politics) to the Federations DLC, which requires the Galactic Community to exist. These traditions empower those that are active in the galactic community, including giving Council members new resolution options to propose.
  • Reworked the Ascension Paths from Utopia. Instead of requiring two ascension perks to be taken, each Ascension Path is now a tradition tree unlocked by an ascension perk.The Synthetic path is now split into two paths, Cybernetics and Synthetics.


General Improvements​

3.5.3:
  • You will no longer get alerts about envoys dying
  • AI will now research debris.

3.6.0:
  • The habitability planet icons in the system view can now be clicked just like on the galaxy map.
  • Added "planet revolt" VO to planetary revolt situation
  • Added a Planet Automation setting which allows for construction even during resource deficits
  • Rolled Slave Revolt content into the general Separatist Revolt Situation as a variety when slaves try to revolt
  • Changed how Planet Automation is presented in the Planet View to more clearly show that there are settings that the player can use
  • Planet Automation Crime Management will now forbid enforcer jobs if you have 0 crimes and allow enforcer jobs if you have more than 27 crime
  • The tooltip for planetary automation designation setting now explains when it will create new jobs

Balance​

3.5.3:
  • Shared Burden now doubles the unity gained from the egalitarian faction
  • Ensured consistency in the Toxic God starting resources: the home system will now always contain a +3 alloys deposit. A nearby one will contain another +2 and a further +6 energy.
  • Federation subjects that cannot vote can no longer persuade federation members that someone should not be invited into a federation
  • Capped Noxious happiness bonus at 40%
  • Vassals that leave an overlord's war by a change in the agreement will now get a truce with every opponent.

3.6.0:
  • The fixable segments for the Shattered Ring origin can now be colonised on game start, depending on the Guaranteed Habitable Worlds setting.
  • Shattered Ringworlds are no longer ideal worlds, but have a base of 100% habitability.
  • Reduced cost and time to restore the Shattered Ringworld by 25%.
  • Repairing Shattered Ring Segments now qualify you for the Galactic Wonders AP.
  • Colonisable Shattered Ring segments have a large number of blockers including some that require advanced technology to clear, but impact the habitability of the segment.
  • Colony designations on ring worlds now provide +10% pop growth and assembly speed (this can be multiplied through planetary ascension). The default "ring world" designation provides +15%
  • Ecumenopolises now give +25% growth and assembly speed, rather than +50% growth (and no assembly)
  • Food Processing Centers, Mineral Purification Hubs, Energy Nexuses, Alloy Nano-Plants, Civilian Repli-Complexes, The Auto-Curating Vault, Citadel of Faith, Corporate Vault and Alpha Hub now have increased cost and upkeep on ringworlds, in exchange for providing the benefits normally giving by their related orbital ring buildings.
  • Added an event on game start with Common Ground origin to let you pick your federation type
  • Mechanist origin now provides +15% robot assembly speed and +1 robot trait pick (for when you unlock robo-modding)
  • The starting robots for the mechanists origin now start with the bulky and high maintenance traits and the matching trait for whichever worker job they hold.
  • The Mechanist origin now grants the Robomodding technology as a research option from the start of the game.
  • If a species cannot live on a planet, it is now the first to be purged from it (this closes a Clone Army exploit related to slowly purging other species instead)
  • It is now allowed for the galaxy to contain multiple void dweller empires
  • Artificers now no longer produce engineering research.
  • Efficient Bureaucracy now grants Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers and Death Priests with Edict Fund production
  • Pearl Divers have had their trade output reduced and their Consumer Goods output increased, with a corresponding increase in food and mineral upkeep.
  • Dramatically increased the absolute value of opinion modifiers.
  • Increased the opinion modifiers granted from first contact, decreased the base rate at which they decay and made the decay rate modified by improving/harming relations.
  • Increased the opinion penalty for undertaking Become the Crisis.
  • Maximum opinion from Improve Relations has been increased to 150. Minimum opinion from Harm Relations has been decreased to -150. Previous values were 100 and -100.
  • Only xenophobes are now happy if the caravaneers are destroyed.
  • Opinion modifiers from Galactic Imperium interactions now have their decay rate affected by improving and harming relations.
  • Refactored opinion modifiers from Galactic Imperium.
  • Xenophile, pacifist and corporate are upset if the caravaneers are destroyed.
  • Capped Federation Experience at 2000 above what is required for level 5, so that level 5 federations with AIs are no longer one of the most fragile configurations known to man
  • Increased the time it takes to do first contact with other civilisations by about 30%
  • Logic Engines trait is now allowed on droids.
  • The Aquatic trait now costs 2 points.
  • Imperialist and Supremacist factions will now be pleased forever if you defeat a Leviathan, not just for 20 years. They are also a bit less selective about which Leviathans they are pleased about you killing (i.e. the list has been updated for those added since Leviathans DLC)
  • Reduced governing ethics attraction of newly-conquered pops
  • Several factions now care about the type of federation you are in, if it is one attached to a particular ethic
  • Subjects that are not disloyal will now gain ethics attraction corresponding to their overlord's ethics (this was already the case for spiritualism, now it is the case for all ethics)
  • The imperialist faction will now care about how much of your fleet power you are using
  • A large number of tweaks to the ethic assignment weights. Includes making certain weights based on diplomacy with empires of a particular ethos have an impact that is more dependent on the number of empires you are engaged in such diplomacy with. Fixed some oddities that hampered authoritarianism, e.g. now relations with authoritarian empires boosts authoritarianism, and if you are authoritarian, it will no longer boost egalitarianism for you to give your pops good living standards. Finally, also added some weights based on the job the pop is actively working (e.g. priests, nobles and soldiers)
  • Occupied planets no longer produce or consume resources from buildings or pops
  • Rebalanced Harmony, Prosperity, Mercantile, Versatility and Adaptability traditions.
  • Slightly increased the chance of having a unique first contact event chain
  • Special endgame crisis factions such at the Aberrant, Cybrex and Sentinels now show up a bit earlier on large galaxy maps
  • The Cybrex and Sentinel factions now scale to a limited degree based on the setting for endgame crisis difficulty (their difficulty = square root of crisis difficulty)
  • Splinter Hive holdings now require at least 30 pops present on the subject planet to be constructed.
  • Tweaked Galactic Market location formula to far more strongly favour trade value in its criteria
  • You can now once again apply species templates that would remove beneficial traits, so long as you were able to make the template as a valid combination in the first place
  • Zro distillation technology no longer explicitly requires Psionic Theory, but is extremely rare without it.
  • Chemical Bliss no longer states that it causes unemployed pops to produce unity.
  • The [REDACTED] now has an acidic gland dealing 1.25% hull damage per day to all ships in the same system. This does not apply to the player controlled variant.

Performance and Stability​

  • Further improved the performance of using triggered economic category modifiers
  • Made mean time to happen events early out if they have fire_only_once and have already fired. (I.e. they will stop draining performance once no longer relevant)
  • Opening the fleet manager in the late game will now have a much-reduced impact on frame rate
  • Slightly sped up the calculation of pop job weights when updating them from serial (i.e. not during the monthly batch parallel update)
  • Fixed a rare crash caused by invalid trade routes
  • Fixed rare crash related to invalid situation or triggered modifier target.
  • Fixed rare crash related to invalid situation while updating country modifiers

UI​

  • Added a more helpful tooltip to the Inter-Dimensional Trade modifiers
  • Added a tooltip for war demand achievement acceptance that lists systems you lack claims on.
  • Added modifier details to production and upkeep of buildings
  • Added modifier details to production and upkeep of districts
  • Added tooltips for ship roles in ship designer.
  • Caravaneers now tell you when you will be allowed to open another Reliquary in the tooltip where they say they can't offer one right now as they need more time to prepare.
  • First Contact event chains will now progress if there is a purely random event with only one option. (Note that this only covers events between stages, not the ones that end stages, which may also only have one option). You can tell if your first contact chain is not blocked by a pending event because the alert icon will look a bit less threatening.
  • Fixed megastructure outliner right click not focusing on the megastructure (as is standard for other outliner objects)
  • Fixed misleading tooltip for why an AI will say no to your request to join their federation (it suggested they did not want to be a federation partner with a current member, but actually it meant that that member did not want to be a federation partner with you)
  • Fixed the tooltip for commercial pacts showing the wrong value for how much you would benefit in terms of trade income
  • Reduced notification spam from empires having certain CBs on you
  • Selecting fleets from the galaxy map will now no longer select fleets merging with larger ones - so you can select all the large fleets in a system and move them somewhere without disrupting all the single ship fleets that are on their way to merge with them
  • The subject will no longer be able to press the "Build Holdings" button in the agreement view.
  • Tooltips regarding offering or receiving Federation Association status now explain that this is basically a non-aggression pact

AI​

3.5.3:
  • Increased the monthly random chance that an AI will decide to start preparing for war.
  • AI empires will now bring their assault armies towards the enemy during war preparation phase.
  • Reduced the maximum AI war preparation period from 60 months to 30 months.
  • Fixed an issue where AI would use their "prepare for war" gather logic even during an ongoing war.
  • Fixed an issue where the AI would try and gather their fleets for an upcoming war in a system which they could not access.
  • Fixed AI sometimes not hiring enough scientists to keep researching.
  • Fixed some cases where AI would inexplicably spam admirals.
  • AI hive-mind will no longer destroy hive warrens.
  • Fixed AI not allocating at least the desired_min to its budgets. Double-allocating resources is less risky than having it not be respected, as with the Influence budget there's a fair chance that the desired minimum may never be hit
  • Improved AI's early game alloy expenditure (it wanted to put a lot into buildings)
  • Xenophile empires are now more likely to build trading hub type starbases, changed from materialists.
  • Fixed issues with starbase module logic which made AI forbidden from building anything on certain starbases.
  • Fixed an issue where AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of resetting their move orders during hyperlane windup time.
  • Fixed an issue where AI empires were not allowed to downgrade shipyard type starbases if they had an ongoing construction of ships which made AI empires have much more shipyards than intended.
  • Fixed an issue where bombarding AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of flying between the starbase in the system and orbiting the bombardment target when they were waiting for assault armies to invade their bombardment target planet.
  • Added additional logic for AI to merge fleets which are close to each other during wars to reduce the amount of small AI fleets.
  • Fixed an issue where AI empires would incorrectly try and merge their assault armies together by using FTL reinforcement mechanic, causing their ground troops to be indefinitely stuck in MIA mode.
  • Fixed several issues with AI regrouping logic where fleets would suicide one by one instead of grouping up together before attacking.
  • AI empires who do not use food will no longer build hydroponics on starbases

3.6.0:
  • AI will not get stuck trying to activate tradition trees it was blocked out from activating, like the ascension perk trees. (This previously mainly affected modded games)
  • AI will now correctly avoid superior enemy forces when pathing to link up with fleet group
  • Fix an issue where the Prethoryn Scourge did not get all AI updates it should
  • Fixed AI sometimes not hiring enough scientists to keep researching
  • Fixed an issue where AI would sometimes build strongholds even though their economy plan for navy cap was not activated
  • Fixed another issue where AI fleets would get stuck in a loop of resetting their move orders during hyperlane windup time
  • Made the AI generally want more battleships, and generally varied the AI's desire for a certain distribution of ship sizes between personalities

Bugfixes​

3.5.3:
  • Fixed Toxoid presapients having Aquatic portraits.
  • Fixed gateway tags not showing up in the solar system map.
  • Fixed megastructure outliner right click not focusing on the megastructure (as is standard for other outliner objects).
  • Fixed one of the outcomes of the Ancient Robot World arc site featuring visual bugs (placeholder model due to not having a correct graphical culture set).
  • Updated tooltip for Mutagenic Spa to match values given by Bath Attendent jobs.
  • Fixed farm appendages bonus from “Damn the Consequences” edict.
  • Fixed low maintenance to be an actual bonus.
  • Added the actual effect of Damn the Consequences to its effect tooltip.
  • Fixed Situation modifiers not updating in some circumstances when you changed Approach or Stage.
  • The Debris Field anomaly will now reliably fire an event when you research it.
  • Fixed copy paste error in Toxoids 3 name list (male regnal names).
  • Fixed the Toxic God branch office building not reliably boosting quest progress, depending on your chosen civics.
  • Fixed radiotrophic simple drones for lithoid hive minds having their mineral upkeep increased instead of decreased.
  • You can now only consecrate one habitat per activation of the Toxic Maw.
  • Updated the tooltip for requiring additional activations of the Toxic Maw.
  • The Prethoryn Brood Queen relic now correctly sets the relic activation cooldown timer.
  • Machine Intelligence pops are now correctly purged again when conquered by an organic empire.
  • Fixed Heritage Sites and Hypercomms Forums not converting to Pillar of Quietuses and Galactic Memorials respectively.
  • Fixed an ungrammatical pronoun being used in one of the early Toxic Knights quests.
  • The primitive habitats in Federation's End system are no longer in danger of being turned into barren worlds by asteroids.
  • Fixed a stray “?” in the event where the Shroudwalker enclave is destroyed.
  • Corrupt Survey Data event can no longer happen on planets with moons, as it would leave the moon orbiting nothing, and due to cost cuts we can assume that the holographic projection couldn't also cover the moon.
  • Fixed the Toxic Knights end bugging out if you *SPOILERS* using a mercenary fleet.
  • Clarified the negative happiness impacts of the Noxious trait in a pop's happiness breakdown.
  • Fixed misleading tooltip for why an AI will say no to your request to join their federation (it suggested they did not want to be a federation partner with a current member, but actually it meant that that member did not want to be a federation partner with you).
  • Fixed Luminous Blades modifier stating it was a bit more effective than it actually was.
  • Fixed megashipyards not benefitting from certain country-wide ship cost and build speed modifiers.
  • Fixed cases where if a hive forced a regular empire to release a vassal with a status quo peace deal, the resulting empire would be a hive empire without hive pops. (Also fixed it for machines, and for the opposite case of regular empires attacking or machines).
  • Added missing effect to the tooltip of the Psionic Archive relic.
  • You can now once again apply species templates that would remove beneficial traits, so long as you were able to make the template a valid combination in the first place.
  • Leader and envoy portraits now switch correctly after undergoing synthetic ascension.
  • Science ship modifiers are no longer doubled in the tooltip.
  • You should no longer be able to have multiple monuments on a single planet (again).
  • Fixed issue where invalid research alternatives may be left in TechStatus after adding pre-learned technologies at start of game.
  • Spiritualist Empires now care about Relentless Industrialism on their holy worlds.
  • Chemical Bliss no longer states that it causes unemployed pops to produce unity.
  • Fixed various crashes.

3.6.0:
  • Added check for disabled fleet when ships are destroyed and end combat if the last ship is disabled.
  • Vassals that leave an overlord's war by a change in the agreement will now get a truce with every opponent.
  • Habitats built in orbit of large zro, alloy or dark matter deposits now also collect these deposits.
  • Habitats built in orbit of planets with multiple deposit types, such as the mixed energy and alloy deposit spawned as part of the KotTG initialiser can now only have one of research, mining or generator districts instead of spawning too many district types.
  • Executing or eating the envoys that hand-delivered a strongly worded letter no longer incorrectly locks policies that are not causing you to be in breach of galactic law.
  • Added close button in caravaneer diplomacy view
  • Added missing megastructures to the Giga-Engineering achievement check.
  • Added missing tooltip for district sorting in expansion planner
  • Adjusted textbox max height to remove truncation in korean fleet view
  • ai hive-mind will no longer destroy hive warren
  • All other resolution in the Galactic Market category now require the market to be formed in order to be proposed.
  • C.A.R.E. Relic World now has Dense Ruins rather than Former Relic World (which it could then get twice if you made it an ecumenopolis)
  • Colony event "Wasteland Radiation" won't trigger anymore if your species is immune to radiations
  • Corpse-Filled blockers now take a year to clear.
  • Corrected the caravaneers focus button sprite and added a location for every related diplomacy event script so that the button shows up.
  • Currently picked anomaly scientist's skill icon now has the correct tooltip
  • Devouring Swarms should no longer come and inspect your ringworlds.
  • Expand the Planetary Sea is now no longer available on a planet you are terraforming
  • Fix a missing "Missing DLC" tooltip for authority type
  • Fix declared crisis war names
  • Fix issue with war names using the wrong Country's name
  • Fixed "blocker cleared" VO not playing
  • Fixed "Crystal Ball" event not triggering correctly upon entering the Crystalline Home System
  • Fixed a case where the caravaneers would ask a country they had never met to relocate there after their home system was destroyed
  • Fixed a tooltip for the Life-Seeded Origin which would appear to repeat a query on the Relentless Industrialists civic.
  • Fixed being unable to reorder the build queue of your branch offices and subject holdings
  • Fixed colony auto designations really thinking you wanted hydroponics stations
  • Fixed Corporate Dominions requiring to have finished Mercantile Traditions to form a Trade League.
  • Fixed galcom resolution Neutral Defenders, Tiyanki Pest Control and the Tiyanki Conservation Act not correctly unlocking sanctions
  • Fixed inconsistent coloring in leader trait descriptions
  • Fixed it being possible to get Slave Optimization agenda and Iron Fist trait without actually having any slaves
  • Fixed missing alpine world modifier in Contingency's habitability preference
  • Fixed missing goto button for "Mineral Factorial" anomaly event
  • Fixed missing X on Xeno-Compatibility tooltip for non-xenophiles.
  • Fixed some cases where orbital deposits could spawn on habitable planets
  • Fixed that the ruined quantum catapult in the salvager system spawned above the black hole.
  • Fixed the diplomatic mapmode showing tooltips saying you were in a Commercial Pact with someone if you had a Research Pact with them, and vice versa
  • Fixed the negative happiness impacts of the Noxious trait being a bit unclear in a pop's happiness breakdown
  • Fixed the possibility that the automatically-spawned Commonwealth of Man or United Nations of Earth could spawn next to a xenophobic fallen empire
  • Fixed the Toxic Knights end bugging out if you *SPOILERS* using a mercenary fleet
  • If you open a Vault on a tomb world Earth, you will now find Humans inside rather than random aliens (unless Humans already exist in the galaxy)
  • Moved process string from effect_impl to CGraphicalModifer::GetFullDescription
  • Removed out dated sector automation logic which was activated for planets when sector automation was enabled but planet automation was deactivated
  • Repairing the Shattered Ring now makes it have your graphical culture too (as restoring ruined ring worlds does)
  • Robot empires will now take planet habitability into account correctly for auto-survey targets
  • Stopped you getting the Xeno Comedy event as a gestalt empire as it didn't really work flavour-wise for them
  • Synth ascension now gives a warning for the Overtuned origin.
  • The asteroid colony event will no longer get distracted when shot and is now slower to allow for more time to react.
  • The Horizon Signal events converting your empire species' portraits wholesale now give you a little bit of warning ("This may have significant and unpredictable consequences")
  • The last pop on a planet will no longer auto-migrate away
  • The resolution Form the Galactic Market is now in the Galactic Market Resolution category.
  • The Spiritualist Awakened Empire should no longer be capable of making a gestalt consciousness turn into a spiritualist empire.
  • The tooltip for planetary ascension upgrade will no longer show upgrade info for the non existent tier 11.
  • The unbidden no longer have an increased opinion of you if you destroy the Caravaneer's home.
  • Updated credits.
  • Using plant crackers against pre-ftl civilizations now requires the Unrestricted Native Interference policy.
  • You can now crack pre-ftl worlds within your borders.
  • You will no longer get a notification of another empire completing their gateway construction when you are the first to make a gateway and it activates some other gateway somewhere.

Modding​

3.5.3:
  • Added show_in_outliner (default: yes) to determine whether a megastructure type should be shown in the outliner
  • Specifying a "key" in a triggered modifier will now at least some of the time make the modifier have that key as its "name"
  • Fixed the script profiler (previous results using it should be disregarded)

3.6.0:
  • Added <resolution_category>_vote_strength_mult modifier
  • Added a define for the ship roles effect on the weapon selection.
  • Added a galaxy_shape trigger
  • Added a is_capitalist scripted trigger to check for corporate authority, merchant guild civic or corporate dominion civic.
  • Added a valid_leader parameter to federation types to limit the leadership candidates
  • Added ability for planet automation to forbid and allow jobs
  • Added ability to script in modifiers on ship sections
  • Added additional_crisis_strength trigger
  • Added country scope num_planetary_ascension_tiers trigger
  • Added destroy and abort triggers for starbase modules and buildings.
  • Added envoy_cohesion_effect_mult modifier for federations
  • Added federation_experience_add modifier
  • Added government_election_years_add and government_election_years_mult
  • Added modifiers planetary_ascension_effect_mult and planetary_ascension_cost_mult
  • Added on_resolution_passed and on_resolution_failed on_actions 340) Added position_on_current_resolution and position_on_last_resolution
  • Added point_defence_targets to component template, which sets valid targets for PD weapons. "missile" and "strike craft" are valid options. See 00_weapons_pointdefence.txt and 00_strike_craft.txt for examples.
  • Added set_variable_to_random_value effect
  • Added size_damage_factor to weapon components, which modifies damage based on the ship size. At 0, there is no effect. Positive values multiply the weapon damage by the value times the target ship size. (Ship size is treated as a minimum of 1 for these calculations.)
  • Added support for sound_is_advisor on show_sound in events
  • Added triggered_ship_modifier in component templates
  • Added upgrade_trigger block for planet automation which allows for individual logic of when buildings should be allowed to be upgraded
  • Fixed num_free_districts sometimes providing erroneous results if used with districts that were not capped by modifiers
  • Fixed print_scope_trigger not working
  • Integrated ship roles to the remaining components and their selection process with an additional define for utility components.
  • Made excessively confusing way of doing tradition tooltips make you have to explicitly tell the game you want to overwrite the automatic modifier and effects tooltip with a custom one (custom_tooltip). Also added custom_tooltip_with_modifiers and made on_enabled show up in the tooltip too
  • Made galaxy shapes (map/galaxy) into regular database objects. This means you can define new ones.
  • Made the fail text of a tradition's "possible" check show up in tooltips
  • Ship roles can now affect weapon selection.

TLDR; ELI5​


The roles for different ship sizes should become more valuable. The introduction of size based damage make Frigates and Cruisers potentially very dangerous to Battleships and other large ships.

Frigates, however, are very vulnerable without a screen of Corvettes to protect them, Destroyers are the masters of Point Defense in Screen or cutting down those Corvettes and Frigates using the Gunship or Brawler roles.

Artillery ships are vulnerable if something closes under the range of their guns, but with a screen that engages the enemy further away, they are free to blast away.

Every ship role has a counter somewhere in the system, and mixed fleets that cover for deficiencies are thus generally much more difficult to hard-counter.

Ship Sizes info


Ship Roles info

If you prefer to listen to a good summary, we have @MordredViking here explaining everything using sounds made by flapping meat at us.


Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Words, Right?​


Torpedo Frigate

A Torpedo Frigate

Neutron Cruiser

Neutron Launchers and Missiles Cruiser

Aux Slots on Battleship Sterns

Different number of Aux Utility slots on the sterns.



Torpedo tooltip

That's going to hurt if it hits that Titan.

Shield Hardener tooltip

Shield and Armor Hardening counter Shield and Armor Penetration.

I Want To Try It and Provide Constructive Feedback!​


Good, I was hoping you would.

As of the posting of this dev diary, the Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” Open Beta should be live on Steam, and will run until the end of the month.

Please note that the 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta is an optional beta patch. You have to manually opt in to access it.
Go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> betas tab -> select "stellaris_test" branch.


Don't forget to turn off your mods, they will break.

As this build is still in “hot” and in development, expect to see many placeholder icons and TODO text here and there. Numbers are not necessarily final, and we’ll be looking at data gathered from the Open Beta to potentially make additional changes.

Known Issues:
  • Many placeholder icons and some placeholder text.
  • All new text will only be in English for the duration of the Open Beta.
  • Ships do not currently back away if they are trapped within the minimum range of their weapons.

We expect to be making more changes and plan to update the beta at least once during the upcoming weeks.

Targeted feedback threads exist for the following topics:
And we have a thread for general discussion of the Open Beta.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the Stellaris 3.6 "Orion" Open Beta!
 
Last edited:
  • 79Like
  • 59Love
  • 11
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Exciting! For the targeted feedback for fleet combat, what kind of fleet composition can we expect from the AI? Will there be a variety of fleet builds, or will we need to be in multiplayer to test different fleet builds against each other?

This isn’t criticism I just don’t know if AI fleet composition behavior was something touched and if looking at it will be useful feedback.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
what kind of fleet composition can we expect from the AI?

The AI generally uses mixed fleets. Personality type, civics, ethics, and a few other factors may skew them to prefer certain types of weapons and the like. Not much has changed there.

It's worth knowing if you feel that they're using, say, too many Frigates too early in the game and the like.
 
  • 25
  • 6Like
Reactions:
The AI generally uses mixed fleets. Personality type, civics, ethics, and a few other factors may skew them to prefer certain types of weapons and the like. Not much has changed there.

It's worth knowing if you feel that they're using, say, too many Frigates too early in the game and the like.

Are there any plans to make the AI react to the composition of enemy fleets? I.e. refitting its ships to counter the enemies as part of the war prep state (if it has sufficient intel).
 
One major issue with combat, and which will be especially annoying now, is that we still cannot decide what goes on Starbase weapon slots. Will that be changed at some point?
 
  • 12Like
  • 4
Reactions:
Is it about time to give Biological Ascension a form of total assimilation like synthetics?
It's one of my favorite features of that path and I'd really like to see it expanded especially on it's sister path that deal's with the alteration of species biology on such a scale!

(It also makes things easier to manager by a few orders of magnitude, which I'd appreciate)

In terms of other feedback, oh boy oh golly shattered ring is already made more amazing, I am loving the changes to bits.
right now necrophage are the only way to assimilate all bio pop
best choice for hive mind
 
How are you supposed to protect any ship bigger than destroyers from torpedoes... when neutron torpedoes are instant?

(I mean, frigattes carrying a LONG RANGE, INSTANT weapon that deals over 1k dmg to battleships and cant be stopped...)
It doesnt fare well for cruisers and destroyers neither
 
  • 4
  • 1Like
Reactions:
How about (post 3.6) making a new line of short range and shield/armor-bypassing G-slot weapons, called "Boarding Pods"? They could be enabled by techs such as Centralized Command and Combat Training, and/or by the technologies that give you better army types. Their unique effects would be they gain a damage bonus equal to the army damage modifiers of your empire and founder species. It would make army damage modifiers a bit less of a joke.
 
  • 8Love
  • 3Like
Reactions:
  • Vassals that leave an overlord's war by a change in the agreement will now get a truce with every opponent.

A bit related to this, will a change in the agreement terms towards Limited Diplomacy break existing treaties of the vassal with 3rd parties?

Currently it doesn't, and that leads to a situation in which the vassal has defensive alliances, commerce pacts and research agreements with other empires, while the overlord cannot propose anything of the sort due to "Recipient must be independent". The vassal itself also cannot break those pacts, as the "Actor must be independent".

In case of defensive pacts it leads to a situation in which the overlord cannot attack that 3rd party, because they're automatically the defender in that war (through their vassal being allied with the war target).

  • Habitats built in orbit of large zro, alloy or dark matter deposits now also collect these deposits.

I have one word for you: Nanites?


I stand corrected, last time I checked it wasn't the case, but now it is. Good times.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Rest in peace artillery battleship meta, long live Neutron Launcher cruiser meta.

Will Energy Torpedoes be changed to be interceptable before 3.6 release or not? Otherwise it kind of defeats the point.

Also could it be possible for ascension traditions to give bonus or new unlocks depending on your ethics like culture workers do?
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
It really doesn't matter which ship (combination) is meta, what matters is everthing will still be doomstack.
This should change!
I have 3 Ideas:
Combatsize, there should not be any advantage in bringing much more ships than the enemy, in a battle the larger side can use only ~1.5 size of the smaller side the rest wont fire.
Logistics, a fleet far away from home should just decay after some time, to supply a fleet you need a fully conquered route to the fleet, if not the fleet uses use it reseverves (quicker in battles) and than decays away.
More bonuses to the defender, atm starbases don't really interact with defending fleets, that should change, a starbase should effectivly increase the health of the defenders e.g. by a seek cover mechanic where the starbase can absorb damage for defending ships using its larger health pool.
 
  • 10
  • 4Like
Reactions:
Could you make the ship role visible somewhere on the main screen in the ship designer once selected, instead of hiding it behind a button? Maybe below the design name
 
  • 6Like
Reactions:
I do thank you for all your efforts! And having some questions.

1. Ship roles are fascinating. Is there any way to add or modify them with modding?

2. For minimum ranges, as shown in your Twitch streams, there must be some fall-back mechanisms for the ships.
But how about the carrier battleships? It looks like they should fall back also.
Considering that the strikecrafts can fly to anywhere in the system, it would be reasonable for the carriers that they run away after they launch the sorties of strikecrafts. How's your plan?

3. And contineing for the ship combat behaviors, do you have any ideas on the behaviors that 'Guarding' other friendly ships? Is there any plan to add them? That might be quiete great for many fleets.

4. I wonder why the NLs are still instant demage weapons. I know you wanna make many big changes but G slot weapon with instant long range damage is somewhat.... strange and hard to understand. Not intuitive I think.

Again, I do appreciate all your works and so happy that you announced the beta!
All hail the Custodians!!!
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Awesome changes, I’m excited to see the fleet meta no longer be three different specializations of battleship.

Is there any chance of a rework of sectors/releasing vassals? Maybe something like EU4 client states, where one province (system) is released, and you can “gift” the new subject country the provinces you want them to have right after doing so. Right now, if you want to release planets already in a sector (or not release others alongside them), it’s extremely tedious (I strategically place habitats) or outright impossible depending on galactic geography.
 
Love those new changes. :)

I wanted to ask though, could picking the Cybernetic Ascension Path also lead to a Machine Uprising? In this case Driven Assimilators (Borg)?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I’m not a fan of the addition of a minimum range. I can’t really wrap my head around what it’s supposed to represent, so it breaks my immersion badly. I’d much rather work with decreased tracking at closer distances than outright being unable to fire at a large target that’s sitting right there.

Really like that all Torpedos and Launchers are in the same slot now.
 
  • 14
  • 1Love
Reactions:
Some nice QoL changes buried in there like long overdue faction demand updates. Also a special shoutout to the level 5 federation adjustment.
 
  • 3
  • 1Love
Reactions:
I’m not a fan of the addition of a minimum range. I can’t really wrap my head around what it’s supposed to represent, so it breaks my immersion badly.

Large weapons being large it makes sense they have much slower turning arcs. Once an enemy is up close they can out-maneuver your large guns.
 
  • 15
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions: