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Stellaris Dev Diary #274 - 3.6.0.beta.final.final(1)v2 Copy

We're happy to announce that we've updated the 3.6 Open Beta again today. As mentioned in the original announcement, the Open Beta was originally supposed to run until the end of October, however due to the unexpectedly high number of players who have participated, we’re going to leave the Open Beta branch available until the official release of 3.6 ‘Orion’. We will continue to monitor the feedback you provide, but due to how close this is to the release, changes made from feedback this late will not be in the release of 3.6 ‘Orion’.

We’d like to thank all of those that have taken the time to try out the changes and given their feedback.

Thus, below are the patch notes for this week’s update to the Open Beta.

Balance
  • Explicitly prevented various scripted solar systems from spawning inside Marauder territory. These include Amor Alveo, Wenkwort, the Caravaneer capital, and Lost Colony origin systems.
  • Integrated Preservation for Machine Intelligences now affects Evaluators (and Chronicle Drones) not Coordinators.
  • Martial Law, Hunter Killer Drones and Compliance Drones planet modifiers now provide penalties to both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  • Moved the repeatable technologies for strike craft into Society - Military Theory.
  • Rebalanced synchronicity traditions to match with the changes to harmony traditions.
  • Larger Unbidden ships and structures now have a point defense solution. Bzzt.

Beta Updates
  • Pacifist Xenophobe empires are no longer ambivalent about attacks on the Caravaneers
  • Fix for terraforming candidates that shown when tech is missing.
  • The Energy Siphon is now a space fauna weapon
  • Fixed a number of tooltips not showing for hive-mind cybernetic ascension
  • Fixed the tooltip for Adaptability for Void Dwellers.
  • Modular Cybernetics adds Augmentation Drones to Spawning Pools for hive-minds. Augmentation Drones turn alloys into pop assembly for cybernetic hive-mind pops.
  • Modular Cybernetics no longer gives hive-minds +10% pop assembly.
  • Ringworld colony designations and ecumenopolis planet class now provide both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  • Updated a number of stern sections to have the correct number of aux slots for offspring ships.
  • Added the Parasitic Overmind Goverment type
  • Added checks for corporate civics for shroud patrons
  • Added missing pop growth and assembly modifiers to unity designations for ringworlds.
  • Added missing tiyanki pop assembly for hive minds.
  • Fixed most of the machine intelligence authority text having highlights.
  • Updated Integrated Anatomy tooltip.
  • Balanced numbers for the instrument of Desire.
  • Fixed that the Cordyceptic Reanimation Facility wasn't buildable inside Amor Alveo.
  • Changed ethics attraction for the Composer and the Whisperer.
  • Knight jobs now give amenities instead of stability as reward from a quest. The Order's Keep now give 15 stability as a reward from that quest
  • Players now have a wider choice of leaders to become chosen through their covenant.
  • Players should no longer be able to form covenants with all the entities if they refuse the first covenant.
  • Shroud cooldown modifiers should now appear as percentage without need for unique loc.
  • The Whisperers stability penalty has been reduced. It now comes with a reduction in Unity.
  • The Whisperers will no longer kill up to 8 (!) pops on a planet.

Bugfixes
  • It is no longer possible to engage the Marauders or Horde in multiple dialogs
  • Lead ships should no longer run into the enemy disregarding their combat computer
  • Tooltip for opinion decay rate now shows two decimal places
  • Reunited the 'Code Changes' and 'Incompatible Code' modifiers with their icons
  • Fix for when becoming a vassal resets all Policies and Species rights to Default.
  • Reimplemented the localisation for the Trader Proxy Office.
  • Marauder clans may no longer spawn in systems which are adjacent to player empires.
  • Fixed AI's difficulty-adjusted economic modifiers, plus certain misevaluations of modifier benefits in its economic strategy
  • Pop Assembly modifiers now have decimal places.
  • Shroud Chosen Leaders will no longer lose their chosen trait on becoming rulers

Improvements
  • The Epi-Genetic Triggers technology and Genetic Resequencing tradition now both allow the removal of pre-sapient traits from species via species modification. The Servile trait from the Syncretic Evolution origin and traits bestowed by the Enigmatic Cache count as pre-sapient traits for this.
  • Renamed 'Planetary Government' and 'Planetary Unification' for gestalts

Modding
  • Fixed show_in_outliner in megastructures not actually working
  • Moved most pop upkeep and resource production to inline script.
  • Removed pop_assembly_speed modifier. You should use planet_pop_assembly_(organic_)mult instead. The sole difference previously was the former only worked in species traits (the untriggered sections) and the latter worked everywhere else (but not species triats). The error log didn't warn you of this, either. So now the latter works everywhere and the former no longer exists.

Once again, by the time this dev diary goes live, the Open Beta should be updated with the above changes. This is likely going to be final update to the beta branch.

Due to the Open Beta update, this dev diary replaces our normally scheduled dev diary that would have gone out on Thursday. We'll have more news next week.

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.
 
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Sure, I think there's a lot of ways that internal politics and culture in stellaris could be made more rewarding and interesting. I'm just not a fan of Trot's constant requests to give every possible advantage to his favourite living standard
stop calling it advantage. you can call it that when utopian abundance is actually better than running slavery, rather than a meme for people who pick xenophobia with it so they can run slavery together with utopian abundance.

what i'm asking for is that it feel distinct and powerful, the way rogue servitor mechanics do, or the way toxic knights do
 
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Sure, I think there's a lot of ways that internal politics and culture in stellaris could be made more rewarding and interesting. I'm just not a fan of Trot's constant requests to give every possible advantage to his favourite living standard

Has anyone tallied up the benefits available with the ethic + lifestyle combos?

Like I personally get great early benefits with Academic Privilege + Fan Mat / Auth + Info Quarantine for cheap +5 Stability (from month 2 until end game).

It's a combo which seems cheaper & more accessible than Utopian Abundance and it seems more beneficial, from my cursory examination. But the specialist +% productivity from Egal isn't weak, either, and Meritocracy just racks that up... but Meritocracy would be available to FMat / Auth via Oligarchy, so that's not strictly a distinction.

What are the benefits that accrue only to Egal + Utopian Abundance, and do they stack up?
 
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what i'm asking for is that it feel distinct and powerful, the way rogue servitor mechanics do, or the way toxic knights do

I agree that it would probably be interesting to move UA into being a civic as well as giving it some mechanical differences. Currently it's just a tickbox which gives your pops more stuff and in no way makes you feel like your society progressed to the United Federation of Planets.

I don't agree that it needs to have every possible advantage tacked on to it.
 
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Has anyone tallied up the benefits available with the ethic + lifestyle combos?

Like I personally get great early benefits with Academic Privilege + Fan Mat / Auth + Info Quarantine for cheap +5 Stability (from month 2 until end game).

It's a combo which seems cheaper & more accessible than Utopian Abundance and it seems more beneficial, from my cursory examination. But the specialist +% productivity from Egal isn't weak, either, and Meritocracy just racks that up... but Meritocracy would be available to FMat / Auth via Oligarchy, so that's not strictly a distinction.

What are the benefits that accrue only to Egal + Utopian Abundance, and do they stack up?
yeah i don't know the math, but i have to wait till i get +30 consumer goods a month before i switch to utopian abundance from shared burdens. for "fairness" I suppose we could give UA the best chance to be strong and measure it while including the shared burdens civic and building benefits. as far as i can tell, it's "strong" when combined with slavery, at least that's how it seems people play it when they're making a "strong build". but for people like me who don't think it's right to do that, from an RP perspective, the math is probably less obviously beneficial. I suspect that mid-late game it blooms. but early game it costs SO SO MUCH.


I agree that it would probably be interesting to move UA into being a civic as well as giving it some mechanical differences. Currently it's just a tickbox which gives your pops more stuff and in no way makes you feel like your society progressed to the United Federation of Planets.

I don't agree that it needs to have every possible advantage tacked on to it.
Either that, so i would swap shared burdens for it later, or have it be tied to the harmony tradition tree and make it more in-depth? not sure if i want to have to take two civics if i want to combine it with shared burdens, or if i want to have to swap one for the other
 
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yeah i don't know the math, but i have to wait till i get +30 consumer goods a month before i switch to utopian abundance from shared burdens. for "fairness" I suppose we could give UA the best chance to be strong and measure it while including the shared burdens civic and building benefits. as far as i can tell, it's "strong" when combined with slavery, at least that's how it seems people play it when they're making a "strong build". but for people like me who don't think it's right to do that, from an RP perspective, the math is probably less obviously beneficial. I suspect that mid-late game it blooms. but early game it costs SO SO MUCH.



Either that, so i would swap shared burdens for it later, or have it be tied to the harmony tradition tree and make it more in-depth? not sure if i want to have to take two civics if i want to combine it with shared burdens, or if i want to have to swap one for the other
With Masterful Crafters, you can switch to Utopian Abundance on month 1 and be fine. Just close your researcher/bureaucrat jobs to save CG, and the clerks for extra research, since UA is actually competitive with them before they get bonuses.

2 researchers, 2 bureaucrats and 2 clerks make 9.6 research, 9.6 unity, and 8.6 trade value. 6 UA pops make 12 research and 6 unity, and the extra trade value from the starting 28 pops (roughly .25 extra each) will roughly make up the TV difference. The extra happiness will overcompensate for the missing 4 amenities.

I had an fun game where I relied almost exclusively on UA for research for the first 100 years, and took Nomadic/Free Haven to get extra growth from the unemployed pops making immigration push. 4.5 growth pushed away because of immigration makes 4.5*.95*.3=1.28 extra growth, which is a pretty hefty bonus to have on 2/3 of your planets.

It's an interesting play style, if not super competitive. It saves a ton of minerals, frees up build time for CG/alloys, lets you skip the research techs (for a while), etc. But eventually to have to at least partially capitulate and get some researchers, since they just become too strong, and you run out of planets where the immigration push still provides growth.

It did fine against the old GA AI, but I'm not sure how it would go with the new difficulty adjusted modifiers. Just be sure to never, ever, sign a migration treaty, or you can kiss your growth goodbye.
 
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It did fine against the old GA AI, but I'm not sure how it would go with the new difficulty adjusted modifiers. Just be sure to never, ever, sign a migration treaty, or you can kiss your growth goodbye.

It's a bit ironic that the ultimate "Welcome! Come here and enjoy yourself, top lifestyle granted for everyone, and no job required!" has migration mechanics pushing people out, rather than pulling them in.
 
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With Masterful Crafters, you can switch to Utopian Abundance on month 1 and be fine. Just close your researcher/bureaucrat jobs to save CG, and the clerks for extra research, since UA is actually competitive with them before they get bonuses.
Oh yeah, Masterful Crafters makes a huge difference, but while this is great advice for how to maximize UA, it isn't exactly fair from a "how powerful is UA, mathematically" perspective because Masterful Crafters is super strong regardless of the living standard. Still, it does remind me I should run MC more often with it.
I had an fun game where I relied almost exclusively on UA for research for the first 100 years, and took Nomadic/Free Haven to get extra growth from the unemployed pops making immigration push. 4.5 growth pushed away because of immigration makes 4.5*.95*.3=1.28 extra growth, which is a pretty hefty bonus to have on 2/3 of your planets.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WISH I COULD DO MORE OF. It feels like a hugely different gameplay loop, and before the pop growth rework I used to run it all the way to late game, thousands of unemployed. Very cool to see the math, so I know how I can get closest to that old playstyle under the new pop growth system.
It did fine against the old GA AI, but I'm not sure how it would go with the new difficulty adjusted modifiers. Just be sure to never, ever, sign a migration treaty, or you can kiss your growth goodbye.
Sigh, that's really sad. UA should lead to the opposite effect. Everyone should WANT to come to your society and be unemployed lol.
 
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I found 2 bugs so far:

Ruler trait which is supposed to reduce science ship cost does not;

Minerals or science on certain planets does not show in system view.
 
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and yet, when you give people oodles of free things, they tend to fanatically unite behind your fanatic egalitarian faction, so i would say there's a clear argument to be made that utopian abundance should be the "not necessarily spiritualist" path to infinite unity. the living standard even makes the pops passively PRODUCE unity. so your argument doesn't even hold water if we take into account CURRENTLY EXISTING BENEFITS to the standard.
Giving "oodles of free things" to people doesn't make them able to do their jobs with no upkeep. It could be argued that they might get more output (kind of debatable, for the sake of the argument I'll buy it), but that's going to add "oodles of free things" to their job upkeep, not reduce it. Those things aren't coming out of thin air, you're providing them.

Nothing about giving people "oodles of free things" makes them able to turn thin air into alloy. That very much could be possible with strong enough psionics. It's very on-theme to psionics and would make it simultaneously more unique and appropriately a match for other ascensions. None of that is true of UA, a living standard you get from an ethic and have the ability to turn off.

I've so far seen it compared to Knights of the Toxic God and Rogue Servitor, which are respectively an origin and an irremovable civic - it should not and must not be as good or as interesting as either, it's a living standard from an ethic. What could be potentially interesting is adding an effect where conquered species moving from UA to any other living standard have a nearly culture shock-like ability to ruin a planet's productivity for an invading empire. That would be fun and actually match what it does.
 
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Giving "oodles of free things" to people doesn't make them able to do their jobs with no upkeep. It could be argued that they might get more output (kind of debatable, for the sake of the argument I'll buy it), but that's going to add "oodles of free things" to their job upkeep, not reduce it. Those things aren't coming out of thin air, you're providing them.

Nothing about giving people "oodles of free things" makes them able to turn thin air into alloy. That very much could be possible with strong enough psionics. It's very on-theme to psionics and would make it simultaneously more unique and appropriately a match for other ascensions. None of that is true of UA, a living standard you get from an ethic and have the ability to turn off.

I've so far seen it compared to Knights of the Toxic God and Rogue Servitor, which are respectively an origin and an irremovable civic - it should not and must not be as good or as interesting as either, it's a living standard from an ethic. What could be potentially interesting is adding an effect where conquered species moving from UA to any other living standard have a nearly culture shock-like ability to ruin a planet's productivity for an invading empire. That would be fun and actually match what it does.
I think UA being more restrictive would be fine. But UA being so bland is not. If it needs to have more restrictions for you to agree that Utopia should look radically different from other societies, so be it. Tie it to completing the harmony tradition tree, as well as egalitarianism, maybe. Then make it as huge as rogue servitor or toxic god for how different the game play is.

Also, you jumped to "making alloys from thin air" when all i said is UA should be the "not necessarily psionic" way to mass ascend planets and get ridiculous amounts of unity.
 
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I still want for gestalts civics can choose what federation type they can make. I don't wanna complete a whole tradition if I wanna rush a Martial Alliance/Hegemon :(
 
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I think UA being more restrictive would be fine. But UA being so bland is not. If it needs to have more restrictions for you to agree that Utopia should look radically different from other societies, so be it. Tie it to completing the harmony tradition tree, as well as egalitarianism, maybe. Then make it as huge as rogue servitor or toxic god for how different the game play is.

Also, you jumped to "making alloys from thin air" when all i said is UA should be the "not necessarily psionic" way to mass ascend planets and get ridiculous amounts of unity.
It's possible I confused you with someone earlier who wanted that to be helping get resources using reductions from planetary ascension specifically. Regardless, why should a living standard given by an otherwise fine ethic also need to be "not bland?" The only ethic that by itself gives something "not bland" is spiritualist getting the short end of the stick with no pop assembly. Why should UA be giving a transformative effect?

If you want UA to have a transformative strong effect on its own it also needs to have an opportunity cost of some significance, and one tradition that you'd probably have anyway isn't it. If you want that, it needs to be 1. An origin or 2. Irremovable or 3. An ascension perk itself.

As an additional note, why does there need to be a non-spiritualist path to massive planetary ascension? That's the only thing spiritualist (or arguably psionics) has going for it in exchange for huge downsides. There's no spiritualist path to massive pop assembly, why on earth should spiritualist's one advantage be widely available?
 
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I find the AI difficulty of the current beta to be very interesting!

I have a lot of hours in this game, so I play on Grand Admiral, with the new double AI % bonus setting on too.

Previously, I have been able to eclipse the AI by about 2240, but not now. They keep up still, and are dangerous. I have not experienced this in a very long time, and I am even trading favors to all the AIs for ridiculous 10-year resource boosts per AI I meet.

This is a great experience, I hope the AI keep up even longer.

I wonder if this is caused mainly by better AI, the impact of the double % modifiers or both?

I've noticed the same. My guess is that it's mostly the double % modifiers but I love it as the late game a lot more interesting. I had multiple games with multiple AI empires fielding 500k+ fleet power around 2300 (grand admiral). Before it always seemed like they struggled to push past the 200-300k mark.
 
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stop calling it advantage. you can call it that when utopian abundance is actually better than running slavery, rather than a meme for people who pick xenophobia with it so they can run slavery together with utopian abundance.

what i'm asking for is that it feel distinct and powerful, the way rogue servitor mechanics do, or the way toxic knights do
Egalitarian is already far above slavery in current patch
 
I found 2 bugs so far:

Ruler trait which is supposed to reduce science ship cost does not;

Minerals or science on certain planets does not show in system view.
All the ship type cost reductions seem to be broken, unfortunately. Not sure about the system view thing. I'd file a bug report; it doesn't help to just say you found it here.
 
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When you say final Beta do you mean placeholder Tech and stuff has been done?

Really want to get back into Stellaris and I love you guys for your constant work but it can be a little daunting when you've been out for a year or so but bought the DLC anyway because... Well.. Space Whales.
 
"Moved the repeatable technologies for strike craft into Society - Military Theory."

arent strike craft engineering weapons? this change makes no coherent sense designwise
 
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and yet, when you give people oodles of free things, they tend to fanatically unite behind your fanatic egalitarian faction, so i would say there's a clear argument to be made that utopian abundance should be the "not necessarily spiritualist" path to infinite unity. the living standard even makes the pops passively PRODUCE unity. so your argument doesn't even hold water if we take into account CURRENTLY EXISTING BENEFITS to the standard.
actually, the opposite is true
the notion that utopias, or the idea of them would result in harmony has been challenged a few times already, the game just doesnt have systems that would be able to simulate internal politics like that at all.

hilariously enough, a society that would have the ability to become "utopian" would fracture and self destruct itself more and more the closer it gets to said utopia. Its simply a matter of the skillsets and mindsets that would be required to reach such a state is inherently incompatible to a stagnant lifestyle an utopia would provide. And you can see that time and time again in history
 
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actually, the opposite is true
the notion that utopias, or the idea of them would result in harmony has been challenged a few times already, the game just doesnt have systems that would be able to simulate internal politics like that at all.

hilariously enough, a society that would have the ability to become "utopian" would fracture and self destruct itself more and more the closer it gets to said utopia. Its simply a matter of the skillsets and mindsets that would be required to reach such a state is inherently incompatible to a stagnant lifestyle an utopia would provide. And you can see that time and time again in history
blah blah blah. i play stellaris for the space communist utopia. not for the "the better life is, the WoRsE iT iS aCtUaLlY!!!!!" cold-war propaganda
 
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hilariously enough, a society that would have the ability to become "utopian" would fracture and self destruct itself more and more the closer it gets to said utopia. Its simply a matter of the skillsets and mindsets that would be required to reach such a state is inherently incompatible to a stagnant lifestyle an utopia would provide. And you can see that time and time again in history

Utopias aren't stagnant though?

I mean if people have the freedom & leisure to do what they want, people tend to do interesting things. The early European scientists were generally nobles with the most utopian luxury of their day -- and what they did with that freedom was invent physics that changed our perception of the world.

That's where you get the +3 research from unemployed Utopians -- it's the future version of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree, thinking.

That's what we see in history.
 
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