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Stellaris Dev Diary #277 - The Hunt is On (Stellaris 3.6 ‘Orion’ Patch Notes)

Hello everyone!

I know that we said that we weren’t going to be updating the 3.6 “Orion” Open Beta branch again, but since the Thanksgiving holidays are coming in the US, I’ve asked for one last update to be pushed to the open beta branch, with a potential release candidate.

This update should be going up right about now, so you get this week's dev diary a day earlier than usual.

Release Candidate, does that mean…?​

Yes, Orion will be released soon. We’re currently targeting the 29th of November unless unexpected issues arise from this final (really!) beta release.

Here are the complete notes for Stellaris 3.6.0 “Orion”.

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#################### VERSION 3.6.0 - Orion ######################​

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Changes and additions

The Stellaris 3.6 “Orion” update includes many changes to combat. More counters should exist for different strategies, and mixed fleets should be more viable than before, covering for the weaknesses of other ship types.

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. This bonus is capped at +800% damage.
  • Torpedoes now have a maximum firing arc of 25 degrees and a shorter maximum range.
  • 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 and Autocannons.
  • Weapon component tooltips now display minimum range and firing arc.
  • Significant adjustments have been made to various ship combat behaviors.
  • 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.
  • Artillery and Carrier combat computers now use the new maintain_range combat behavior, which attempts to back off if at less than roughly half their desired range.
  • Strike Craft no longer intercept missiles, but will continue to fight each other. Reduced the health and refresh rate of most strike craft.
  • 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 Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals, Living Metal, or Zro to provide armor and shield hardening.
  • 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.
  • Disruptors and Autocannons are now considered Brawling weapons, with short range but faster attacks.
  • Mining lasers are now classified as Brawling weapons. Refire rate and general stats have been adjusted.
  • With the exception of Autocannons, Kinetic and Missile weapons no longer have bonus hull damage.
  • Lasers now deal 25% bonus hull damage.
  • Increased the power consumption, cost, and damage of Plasma weapons to differentiate them more from other energy weapons.
  • 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 Hit and Run doctrine provides +2 Disengagement Opportunities.
  • Admirals now grant their fleet +1 Disengage Opportunity at levels 5 and 10.
  • The Enigmatic Encoder now proves +1 Disengagement Opportunity rather than evasion.
  • 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 of fixed values.
  • 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.)
  • Missiles now fit into S weapon slots and have had their damage modified accordingly, Swarmer Missiles go into M. Torpedoes (and Proton/Neutron Launchers) are now the only weapons that fit into the G slot.
  • Adjusted the maximum range of all non-torpedo missiles. Reduced the range of torpedoes. Decreased Missile Accuracy from 100% to 85%.
  • 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 should try to spread out a little further away from one another in combat.
  • Ion Cannons now have 3 Aux slots. The Destroyer (Interceptor), Cruiser (Gunship), and Battleship (Broadside) stern sections now have an extra Aux slot.
  • Adjusted power costs for Aux slot utilities.
  • 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.

FEATURES
  • 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.
  • Added a version of the Synthetic ascension path for machines to Synthetic Dawn.
  • 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.
  • Added Conclave Federation Election type to Federations.
  • Added Ascensionists civic to Utopia for regular empires and equivalents for hives and machines. Provides +25% planetary ascension effects, -10% ascension cost, and reduces the additional cost of traditions from empire size by 25%.
  • 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.
  • 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 an archaeology site in a new solar system with a debris belt.
  • Added support for Text To Speech in various views containing longer texts.
  • Added the Cordyceptic Drones civic to Necroids for hiveminds, allowing them to reanimate all organic space fauna..
  • Added an event on game start with Common Ground origin to let you pick your federation type.
  • Implemented new event chains.

IMPROVEMENTS
  • AddedRolled Slave Revolt content into the general Separatist Revolt Situation as a variety when slaves try to revolt.
  • Added "planet revolt" VO to planetary revolt situation
  • The habitability planet icons in the system view can now be clicked just like on the galaxy map.
  • Added a Planet Automation setting which allows for construction even during resource deficits.
  • Added tooltip for Detox saying how many Toxic Terraforming CandidatesTCs existyou have within your borders.
  • Machine name lists now use hexadecimal and 0-based sequential names.
  • Made auto-migration happen via weighted random (so the destination planet will be algorithmically chosen from among the valid destinations, rather than pops always favoring a certain planet until it is full even when multiple are available).
  • Changed how Planet Automation is presented in the Planet View to more clearly show that there are settings available.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.
  • Added a new event image for reanimation related events
  • Added the Parasitic Overmind Government type.
  • Explicitly prevented various scripted solar systems from spawning inside Marauder territory. These include Amor Alveo, Wenkwort, the Caravaneer capital, and Lost Colony origin systems.
  • Delayed the start of precursor events for empires with the On the Shoulders of Giants origin. Players who are busy exploring their own backstory may begin exploring those of the broader galaxy after completing the 'Intercepting History' event chain, at which point Precursor events are 3x more likely to appear.
  • Habitats built in orbit of large zro, alloy or dark matter deposits now also collect these deposits.

BALANCE
  • Occupied planets no longer produce or consume resources from buildings or pops.
  • Added nanite autocannons and flak cannons as a reward for killing the scavenger bot.
  • The Aquatic trait now costs 2 points.
  • Driven Exterminators should now be able to assimilate other machines after taking Synthetic traditions.
  • Added a Robot Assembly Complex building that gives 2 roboticist jobs. This is unlocked by a new Robotic Assembly Systems technology.
  • The Logic Engines trait is now allowed on droids.
  • Tweaked Galactic Market location formula to far more strongly favor trade value in its criteria.

  • 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.
  • 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).
  • Artificers now no longer produce engineering research.
  • Made Zro Distillation more likely to appear if you have a Shroudwalker teacher.
  • Pearl Divers have had their CG output increased, with a corresponding increase in food/mineral upkeep. Their trade value output has been reduced.
  • Splinter Hive holdings now require at least 30 pops present on the subject planet to be constructed.
  • The Toxic Entity 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.
  • 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)
  • Certain technologies are no longer cheaper than other technologies in the same tier.
  • 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.
  • Ringworld colony designations and ecumenopolis planet class now provide both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  • 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)
  • Efficient Bureaucracy civic now grants Bureaucrats, Priests, Managers and Death Priests with Edict Fund production that scales with modifiers to their Unity production.
  • 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 the Leviathans DLC)
  • Several factions now care about the type of federation you are in, if it is one attached to a particular ethic
  • The Imperialist faction will now care about how much of your fleet power you are using.
  • Factions will now disband and not reform if they can command the support of less than 3% of the electorate.
  • Halved the culture worker modifiers for Egalitarians, Xenophobes and Xenophiles.
  • Doubled the culture worker modifier for Pacifists.
  • Increased the time it takes to do first contact with other civilisations by about 30%.
  • Slightly increased the chance of having a unique first contact event chain.
  • It is now allowed for the galaxy to contain multiple void dweller empires.
  • Moved the repeatable technologies for strike craft into Society - Military Theory.
  • Reduced governing ethics attraction of newly-conquered pops.
  • Removed defense platform cost and upkeep reductions from Bulwarks. Bulwarks now gain inherent shield and armor hardening as they level up.
  • Strategic resource planetary automation will no longer fill fortress designation planets with refineries instead of strongholds.
  • 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 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).
  • Martial Law, Hunter Killer Drones and Compliance Drones planet modifiers now provide penalties to both mechanical and organic pop assembly.
  • Zro distillation technology no longer explicitly requires Psionic Theory, but is extremely rare without it.
  • Buffed the daemonic incursion by giving them additional naval capacity, reduced ship upkeep and many more fleets (scaling off of their naval cap).
  • Updated Merc and Salvager station designs due to changes in which weapons could fit in which slots.
  • Extradimensional Anchors and Portals now have a shield hardening aura for allies in that system.
  • Larger Extradimensional ships and structures now have a point defense solution. Bzzt.
  • Special endgame crisis factions such at the Aberrant, Cybrex and Sentinels now show up a bit earlier on large galaxy maps.
  • Presapient traits now have no trait point or trait pick cost.
  • Ascension Paths:
    • Assimilation tooltips now state if they will remove psionic or cybernetic traits.
    • You can now psionically awaken cyborgs. Doing so removes any cybernetic implants they have.
    • Installing cybernetic implants in a psionic species now prevents them from having any psionic abilities.
    • Non-hive-mind cybernetically ascended empires can now remove the hive-mind trait from hive-minded cyborg pops by assimilation.
    • The budding trait is no longer mutually exclusive with the vat-grown trait. The polymelic trait is now mutually exclusive with all versions of the budding traits.
    • Rebalanced the Cyborg, Erudite, Psychic and Synthetic leader traits.
  • AI Opinions:
    • Dramatically increased the absolute value of most 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 respectively.
    • Opinion modifiers from espionage operations now have their decay rate affected by improving and harming relations.
    • Opinion modifiers from Galactic Imperium interactions now have their decay rate affected by improving and harming relations.
    • Refactored opinion modifiers from Galactic Imperium.
    • Only xenophobes are now happy if the caravaneers are destroyed.
    • Xenophile, pacifist and corporate are upset if the caravaneers are destroyed.
  • Traditions:
    • Rebalanced Harmony, Prosperity, Mercantile, Versatility, Synchronicity and Adaptability traditions.
  • Origins:
    • Mechanists: Now provides +15% robot assembly speed and +1 robot trait pick as origin modifiers instead of -5% robot upkeep. The starting robots now have the bulky and high maintenance traits and the matching trait for whichever worker job they hold. Finally, they now have Robomodding as a guaranteed research option from the start of the game.
    • Shattered Ring: The number of segments that are colonizable on game start now depends on the Guaranteed Habitable Worlds setting. These segments have a large amount of blockers including some that require advanced technology to clear, but impact the habitability of the segment. Shattered Ringworld segments are no longer ideal worlds, but have a base of 100% habitability. Repairing shattered ringworld segments now qualify you for the Galactic Wonders AP. The cost and time to restore the shattered ringworld segments has been reduced by 25%.
  • Corpse-Filled blockers now take a year to clear.

AI
  • AI will now value you offering them fleets. This fixes several cases where you could cheese the AI with worthless offers (e.g. fleets that you have just disbanded, or fleets that have no FTL drive, or are 100% of your total fleet despite being just 1 ship)
  • Added base unity target for machine empires so they can afford more leaders in the early game.
  • AI assault transports will now go ahead and invade planets if they have enough strength even if they have additional reinforcements on they way.
  • AI will no longer assign excessive amounts of fleets to bombard the same planet.
  • AI will no longer 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 build armies based on the size of their economy.
  • AI will now correctly avoid superior enemy forces when pathing to link up with their fleet group
  • AI will now use war time edicts, and pay for their strategic resource from their stockpile without constructing additional rare resource producing buildings.
  • AIs lacking rare resources will no longer create ship designs that rely on them.
  • Fixed an issue where the Prethoryn Scourge did not get all AI updates it should.
  • Fixed an issue where AI would sometimes build strongholds even though their economy plan for navy cap was not activated.
  • Made the AI generally want more battleships, and generally varied the AI's desire for a certain distribution of ship sizes between personalities.
  • Made strategic AI take friendly following fleets into account when computing fleet power.
  • Empires will now support crisis decelerations against empires they are at war with.
  • Fixed issues with AI's difficulty-adjusted economic modifiers, and certain misevaluations of modifier benefits in its economic strategy

STABILITY
  • Fixed Out of Sync involving branch office power production.
  • Fixed a crash when ascending planets
  • Eliminated potential out-of-sync due to diplomatic relations.

PERFORMANCE
  • Fixed lag from having a combination of a large number of species and a large number of colonisable planets.
  • Opening the fleet manager in the late game will now have a much-reduced impact on frame rate
  • Reduced UI frame rate lag from several sources (notably related to fleets and calculations of whether and where any reinforcements can be recruited)
  • 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).
  • Slightly sped up the calculation of pop job weights when updating them from serial (i.e. not during the monthly batch parallel update)
  • Added caching to AI fleet power calculations.

UI
  • Added terraforming candidate icon to galaxy map and system view.
  • 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. This permits selecting all large fleets in a system without disrupting any fleets that are on their way to merge with them.
  • 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.
  • Added planetary designations to the dropdown list for selecting planets in the resettlement view, and generally made it look a bit nicer.
  • Tooltips regarding offering or receiving Federation Association status now explain that this is basically a non-aggression pact
  • Added a more helpful tooltip to the Inter-Dimensional Trade modifiers.
  • The technology card UI will now resize dynamically depending on the size of the content in the card.
  • Fixed selected technology card scroll bar overlapping the unlocked content icons.
  • Fixed mouse shortcut tooltip for pausing the game being displayed in multiplayer even though it cannot be used in multiplayer.
  • Added a tooltip for war demand achievement acceptance that lists systems you lack claims on.
  • Added information on potential branch offices for megacorps to the "Kick from Federation" diplo action's tooltip, since Commercial Pacts between federation members are not a thing
  • Expansion planner view now has ahave Terraforming Candidate filter. which will help the player to find the uninhabitable planets which has potential to be terraformed to habitable ones. Also there is new status icon which will help distinguish the planets which are possibleis possible to terraform from the ones that are notis not. (not owned, tech requirements, etc...)
  • 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 by the alert looking less urgent.because the alert icon will look a bit less threatening.
  • Fixed the tooltip for commercial pacts showing the wrong value for how much you would benefit in terms of trade income.
  • Fixed it being possible for the subject toThe subject will no longer be able to press the "Build Holdings" button in the agreement view.
  • Added modifier details to production and upkeep of buildings.
  • Added modifier details to production and upkeep of districts.

BUGFIXES
  • Fixed strike crafts flying far below the fleet during combat.
  • Added check for disabled fleet when ships are destroyed and end combat if the last ship is disabled. This may solve some instances of the “invincible fleet” bug.
  • The last pop on a planet will no longer auto-migrate away.
  • The asteroid colony event will no longer get distracted when shot and is now slower to allow for more time to react.
  • The Holy Guardians will no longer mind if you turn their Holy Worlds into other planet types as long as you have the Head of Zarqlan. MAY HIS WILL BE DONE
  • Fixed planetary ascension modifiers increasing rather than decreasing empire sprawl.
  • Auto-designed ships can no longer equip space amoeba weapons.
  • Fixed it being possible to get Slave Optimization agenda and Iron Fist trait without actually having any slaves.
  • Added missing megastructures to the Giga-Engineering achievement check.
  • Repairing the Shattered Ring now makes it have an appearance that matches your empire’s scheme (as restoring ruined ring worlds does).
  • Fixed the possibility that the automatically-spawned Commonwealth of Man or United Nations of Earth could spawn next to a xenophobic fallen empire.
  • 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.
  • 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")
  • 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)
  • Fixed a case where the Caravaneers would ask en empire they had never met to relocate there after their home system was destroyed.
  • It is no longer possible to engage the Marauders in conversation multiple times, simultaneously.
  • Fixed some cases where orbital deposits could spawn on habitable planets.
  • Expand the Planetary Sea is now no longer available on a planet you are terraforming.
  • Renamed the 'Planetary Government' and 'Planetary Unification’ technologies for Machine and Hive Mind empires. Machines now begin with 'Planetary Instantiation', and may research 'Uniform Data Standards' as before. Hive Minds begin with 'Planetary Plexus', and now refer to the subsequent technology as 'Evolutionary Convergence'. The actual effects of these technologies remain unchanged.
  • Fixed that the ruined quantum catapult in the salvager system spawned above the black hole.
  • Tweaked a solar system generated as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin. The vassal's neighborhood gas giants are no longer quite as close to consuming nearby asteroid belts.
  • Marauder clans may no longer spawn in systems which are adjacent to player empires.
  • Fixed "blocker cleared" VO not playing.
  • Fixed STT button not being clickable in the multiplayer lobby.
  • Fixed STT button being malplaced in the multiplayer lobby.
  • Fixed an issue which would prevent the Galactic Rebellion from forming if its instigator was the only independent (i.e. non-subjugated) empire left in the galaxy.
  • The Spiritualist Awakened Empire should no longer be capable of making a gestalt consciousness turn into a spiritualist empire.
  • Fixed some issues with intel logic that could mean that occupied planets could be set to flip between surveyed and unsurveyed each day.
  • Executing the envoy that hand-delivered a strongly worded letter no longer incorrectly locks policies that are not causing you to be in breach of galactic law.
  • Eating the envoy that hand-delivered a strongly worded letter now locks policies that are causing you to be in breach of galactic law.
  • Pacifist Xenophobe empires are no longer in two minds about those who choose to destroy Caravaneer fleets. Pacifism wins out and they now only hold a negative Opinion towards such empires, rather than both positive and negative.
  • Reunited the ‘Code Changes’ and ‘Incompatible Code’ empire modifiers with their missing icons.
  • First Contact events involving the Shroudwalker and Salvager enclaves now play appropriate sound effects.
  • Fixed the broken ringworld segment for the fallen machine intelligence from hiding behind the other segments.
  • Empires released by those that have the Divine Sovereign civic will no longer inherit the Divine Sovereign civic.
  • Devouring Swarms should no longer come and inspect your ringworlds.
  • Fixed an unsupported glyph appearing in place of apostrophes in assorted 'Specialist Subject' events.
  • Fixed Corporate Dominions required to have finished Mercantile Traditions to form a Trade League.
  • The unbidden no longer have an increased opinion of you if you destroy the Caravaneer's home.
  • Fix a missing "Missing DLC" tooltip for authority type
  • Added missing flags for Could Be Worse to the Knights' version of Venus and the toxic planets in the Toxic Entity's system.
  • Colony event "Wasteland Radiation" won't trigger anymore if your species is immune to radiation.
  • Completing the Flesh is Weak special project will no longer allow psionic pops to keep the psionic trait when they gain the cybernetic trait.
  • Contingency Worlds now become ordinary colonizable worlds upon losing their Pops.
  • Colonies that are depopulated in the middle of ground combat will now correctly end the battle.
  • Fixed generated war names when a crisis is declared by the Galactic Community.
  • Fix for when becoming a vassal resets all Policies and Species rights to Default.
  • Fixed issue with war names using the wrong Empire's name.
  • Fixed "Crystal Ball" event not triggering correctly upon entering the Crystalline Home System.
  • 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 galcom resolution Neutral Defenders, Tiyanki Pest Control and the Tiyanki Conservation Act not correctly unlocking sanctions.
  • Fixed missing alpine world modifier in Contingency's habitability preference.
  • Fixed missing goto button for "Mineral Factorial" anomaly event.
  • Habitats built in orbit of planets with multiple deposit types, such as the mixed energy and alloy deposit spawned as part of the Knights of the Toxic God origin can now only have one of research, mining or generator districts instead of overflowing with too many district types
  • 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).
  • Lead ships should no longer run into the enemy disregarding their combat computer.
  • Percentage based hull, armor, and shield regen modifiers now show their values correctly. (As +1% rather than +0.01%)
  • planet_stability_add modifier now has a single decimal place, meaning that Death Chronicler and Chronicle Drone jobs are correctly shown to be producing 2.5 stability instead of 2.
  • Fixed localization for the Trader Proxy Office.
  • Removed out dated sector automation logic which was activated for planets when sector automation was enabled but planet automation was deactivated.
  • Robot empires will now take planet habitability into account correctly for auto-survey targets.
  • Shroud Chosen Leaders will no longer lose their chosen trait on becoming rulers.
  • 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.
  • You can now crack pre-ftl worlds within your borders.
  • Using planet crackers against pre-ftl civilizations now requires the Unrestricted Native Interference policy.
  • Fixed caravaneer diplomacy view not having a close button.
  • A fleet now tries to target system star if starbase or planet orbital target gets destroyed
  • Adjusted fleet view textbox max height to remove truncation in Korean.
  • Non-potential resource terms will not be validated for agreement proposal
  • Defense platforms no longer sail away when in combat but too far away from engaging the enemies.
  • Corrected the caravaneers focus button sprite and added a location for every related diplomacy event script so that the button shows up.
  • Pops employed at removed jobs now gets fired instead of sticking around.
  • Fixed species modification window not showing all species traits if you had a large number of traits.
  • Thought Enforcement edict is now available even if you haven't made contact with another empire.
  • Fixed the ‘disband fleet’ button in the fleet view using the disband ship icon.
  • The option to close communications with Mercenary Enclaves upon first greeting them has been moved to the bottom of the event screen, in line with other, similar events.
  • Corrected SPQR family name gender.
  • Daemons will no longer use any random namelist.
  • Fixed inconsistent coloring in leader trait descriptions.
  • 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.
  • The tooltip for planetary ascension upgrade will no longer show upgrade info for the non existent tier 11.
  • Fixed missing X on Xeno-Compatibility tooltip for non-xenophiles.
  • Fixed a tooltip for the Life-Seeded Origin which would appear to repeat a query on the Relentless Industrialists civic.
  • Added missing tooltip for district sorting in expansion planner.
  • Currently picked anomaly scientist's skill icon now has the correct tooltip.

MODDING
  • Fixed num_free_districts sometimes providing erroneous results if used with districts that were not capped by modifiers.
  • 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
  • Added government_election_years_add and government_election_years_mult.
  • Added ability to script in modifiers on ship sections.
  • Added support for sound_is_advisor on show_sound in events.
  • Added on_resolution_passed and on_resolution_failed on_actions.
  • Added position_on_current_resolution and position_on_last_resolution.
  • Added a quick open option for IMGUI views related to selectable entities ingame. Holding ctrl + alt and selecting a ship or fleet will now open the IMGUI debug view for fleets and ships.
  • Split if_resolution into a separate if_scaled_resolution. This allows for separation of pure and scaled resolution conditions in GUI script.
  • Added <resolution_category>_vote_strength_mult modifier.
  • 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 additional_crisis_strength trigger.
  • Added console commands "text_to_speech_raw" and "text_to_speech_loc".
  • Added country scope num_planetary_ascension_tiers trigger.
  • Added envoy_cohesion_effect_mult modifier for federations.
  • Added federation_experience_add modifier.
  • Added modifiers planetary_ascension_effect_mult and planetary_ascension_cost_mult.
  • Added set_variable_to_random_value effect.
  • 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 last_added_deposit
  • Fixed print_scope_trigger not working
  • Fixed root and from scopes within create_leader and create_ship
  • Fixed show_in_outliner in megastructures not actually working.
  • If you add too many options in an archaeology site or first contact, it now adds a scrollbar for those that don't fit in the interface.
  • 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.
  • 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 traits). The error log didn't warn you of this, either. So now the latter works everywhere and the former no longer exists.
  • Added destroy and abort triggers for starbase modules and buildings.
  • Ship roles can now affect weapon selection. Added a define for the ship roles effect on the weapon selection.
  • Integrated ship roles to the remaining components and their selection process with an additional define for utility components.
  • Ethics are now individually overwritable.
  • 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 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.
  • Localization can now handle grammatical cases and complex grammatical dependencies.
  • Added support for grammatical gender and plural in names.
  • Added a new way to make localization aware of names' grammatical genders and similar attributes.

Final Comments on the Open Beta​

Due to the incredible success of the Orion Open Beta, we’re very likely to do similar releases in the future. Thank you all again for your help - Orion’s in much better shape thanks to your feedback.

I intend on pursuing a smaller set of changes for the next one - testing out a limited set of AI vassalization acceptance changes as the next Open Beta, and possibly some economic tweaks.

So What’s Next?​

The Canis Minor update will follow Orion in Q1 of 2023, and among other things it will include some of the feedback from the Orion beta that we weren’t able to address for 3.6, and further combat adjustments based on live observation.

This includes things such as a rebalancing of technologies to make the Engineering branch less heavy compared to the other two. I’ll go into the other things planned for the update in the new year.

One of Ptolemy’s constellations, Canis Minor is the little dog that follows the hunter Orion.

Tofu, our QA Director's new puppy!

Meet Tofu, the little dog that follows our QA Director.

That’s it for today. Enjoy the release candidate!



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.


Reminder: If you’re using mods, they’re likely to break.
 
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Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the combat computers as a concept.
  • No control at all over ship range/behavior if you haven't researched the first tier of computers. You just get whatever is default for the ship type, which might be terrible (e.g. missile corvettes do NOT want to use swarm behavior with no bonuses!).
  • It's hard to control the range precisely.
    • Instead you get stupid misbehaviors like titans actively keeping the enemy out of the range of their own Kinetic Artillery, because their Perdition Beam's 250 base range is > 2x the Kinetic Artillery's 120 base range. It is literally impossible to make a titan willing to close to artillery range except by removing the Perdition Beam!
    • Median weapon range is basically never a useful concept. If my destroyers have a mix of rails and lasers, I don't want to have to carefully ensure that there are enough lasers that the median weapon is a laser and this stupid ship will actually get close enough to an enemy station to hit it with said lasers!
    • Battleships shouldn't have to sacrifice either their long-range role or their spinal weapons to be able to consistently get within artillery/swarmer range.
  • The bonuses are kind of... questionable.
    • Swarm computer giving evasion is great... right up until you max out your evasion. Also for some reason it gives less rate-of-fire bonus.
    • Picket computer (and psychic computers) giving tracking is similarly great right up until your weapons+sensors guarantee you'll hit max tracking, at which point both options of computer are pretty useless for e.g. autocannon corvettes with an afterburner.
    • Line computer looks worse than it is if you don't know the kind of weird way that Stellaris computes to-hit chance (Inaccuracy is an additive - not multiplicative - miss chance with enemy evasion, and to-hit bonuses are an additive subtraction of miss chance _after_ evasion-minus-tracking, so Line computers can make even "perfectly accurate" weapons like disruptors hit more often against evasive enemies). Its to-hit bonus is still worthless if your weapons have full accuracy and more tracking than the enemy evasion, though (small disruptors, strike craft, etc.).
    • Artillery computer is the only one with a bonus that is both (mostly) obvious - the fact that it indirectly increases engagement range aside - and almost always good. With smaller weapons the range bonus is pretty trivial but it does still get you the first shot for each class of weapon.
    • Carrier computer is just... bad. The ability to engagement-lock an enemy fleet from across a system is nice (aside from the thing where you'll also obligatorily engage every enemy outpost which can slow down pursuits of fleets in hostile space) but everything else about it sucks. The ships that brought Artillery computers will still win the alpha strike, and also it's still flat impossible to make a hull with more than 50% of its weapon weight be strike craft. Worst of all, this computer has no DPS improvement at all!
    • Torpedo computer is also bad. Providing a bonus to damage rather than RoF isn't awful for high-alpha weapons like torpedoes, though the actual amount of the bonus is a little lacking. The fact that it only applies to explosive weapons sucks though, as it means you don't want to pair torpedoes with their obvious counterparts of autocannons (kinetic) or disruptors (energy), but rather with missiles (which are long-range weapons). It also really needs some additional bonuses to bring it in line with other computers.
  • The behaviors are also questionable!
    • Is there actually any value to "charge directly at the enemy" with the Torpedo computer? Seems like it means you'll spend a lot of time in the firing arc.
    • Why do Picket and (especially) Line computers refuse to keep the range open the way Artillery and Carrier computers do?
    • Does ship angle / firing arc even actually matter? That is, do ships ever have a weapon loaded and an enemy in range, but refuse to fire because of the arc? It seems like instead they snap around for just a moment to fire. Circling or evasive behavior only matters to damage dealt if turning speed is limited.
  • Restrictions by hull type are also questionable!
    • Why can't Corvettes use anything that keeps long range? It was bad enough when they could only mount at most one long-range weapon, but now they can mount a full array of missiles but lack any ability to keep a long range.
    • Why can't anything except Corvettes swarm? It's a percentage-based evasion bonus, so large ships wouldn't meaningfully benefit from swarming, but there's mid-tier of ships (Cruiser/Frigate/Destroyer) that will sometimes have enough evasion to meaningfully exceed enemy tracking, and being able to exceed it further would be really good, and instead they are stuck with no choices except "afterburner, Y/N?" for meaningfully improving their evasion.
    • Why can't Titans use Line or even Picket computers? Titans are fully capable of mounting brawler weapons now, but they refuse to actually brawl. (In fact, as noted above, they refuse to let the enemy into range of their Artillery if they can help it, unless you take away their signature weapon and leave the T slot empty).
Strongly suggest one or more of the following:
  1. Let people select the target range for their ships, either directly or by tying it to a weapon of the designer's choice.
    1. Relatedly, let people choose whether their ships attempt to maintain range or not.
    2. At the least, you probably always should attempt to keep enemies out of your minimum range!
  2. Let people select the desired behavior for their ships even before unlocking upgraded computers.
  3. Do a balance pass on computer bonuses.
    1. Consider branching out a bit in what modifiers to add (e.g. Torpedo and Swarm ships want to be fast, at least in combat; Carrier wants hangar or strike craft bonuses)
    2. Don't make any computer straightforwardly worse at combat effectiveness than its peers.
    3. Try to avoid situations where any computer will predictably max out such that they're no point using it (as Swarm does once you have high-level drives and maybe a few admiral- or empire-level evasion bonuses).
  4. Either make ships take a meaningful amount of time to turn, or get rid of firing arc and behaviors (such as "fly directly at the enemy") that only make sense when firing arc is a concern.
    1. Note that this does NOT mean "make ships take a meaningful amount of time to change their direction of travel". That's already in the game, with momentum and acceleration being small but meaningful.
    2. However, with ~instant turning, a ship can spin around, fire off a torpedo or particle lance, spin back, and keep moving in the same direction as before with ~0 loss of speed or time unable to fire.
  5. Update the post-battle UI to see how much time weapons didn't do damage because they were loaded but unable to fire, for all the possible reasons.
    1. No valid target in range
    2. No valid target in firing arc
    3. No target with an above-zero chance of tracking? (At present the weapon just uselessly fires anyhow, showing up as a miss)
 
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Changes between beta 2 and beta 3 files in common and events, for anyone interested for the additions specific to this build:
  • [Balance] Strike Craft have been nerfed.
    • Launch time increased from 1.5 to 2.
    • Regen decreased from 1 to 0.5.
      • It's unclear to me whether this is hull/shield regen or time to regenerate destroyed ships. If the latter, then this is a buff that mostly negates the nerf to defenses (but not launch & travel time).
    • Shields and Hull have been halved (rounded down, in the case of t1 and t3 hull)
    • Amoeba strike craft hull reduced by more than half, from 50 to 20.
    • Prethoryn strike craft did NOT have their armor reduced (but did halve their hull from 80 to 40). Their launch time remains 1 and they already had 0.5 regen.
    • [New bug?] Grey Tempest nanite strike craft are unchanged and keep their 100 hull and 50 shields & armor, now at least double the health of any other strike craft for each defense type (Strike Craft III now have 25 shields, Prethoryn strike craft have now 40 hull and 20 armor).
  • Armor Hardeners now use different icon keys.
  • [Improvement] Reanimators civics
    • Reanimation events now use picture = GFX_evt_necromancy. (ancrel.4026, ancrel.4026, aquatics.115, distar.59, distar.218, distar.5016, leviathans.675)
    • Reanimated 'ship' designs now use special reanimated ship section templates with reanimated GFX entities.
      • Reanimated Tiyanki hatchlings and calves now have hull_scale = 0.2.
      • Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch auxiliary slots increased from 1 to 4.
  • [Improvement] Evironmentalist civic now interacts with the Migrating Forestscolony event chain:
    • colony.1 (# Migrating Forests): Empires with the Environmentalists civic can no longer get the "Burn Migrating Forests" special project.
    • colony.2 (# Special Project Completed 1): Empires with the Environmentalists civic now get a tier 1 unity reward lump for completing the "Study Migrating Forests" special project.
  • [Improvement] On the Shoulders of Giants origin empires are now blocked from getting precursor anomalies until they complete the Intercepting History event chain (via the new scripted_trigger has_precursor_intro = no), after which precursor anomalies have 3x weight (@origin_shoulders_multiplier) to make up for lost time.
    • origin.1360 (Closure, On the Shoulders of Giants) now sets the origin_shoulders_closure flag, allowing the new has_precursor_intro scripted trigger to return true for empires with the On the Shoulders of Giants origin.
    • New scripted triggers: has_precursor_intro
    • New scripted variable: @origin_shoulders_multiplier = 3 # allows 'On the Shoulders of Giants' empires to catch up on precursor content
  • [Removal] The Insidious Ophidians event chain has been removed (commented out).
  • [Bugfix] agreement_term_values: implemented restrictions/tooltips for the A Voice for All and Ensured Sovereignty resolutions in the subject_can_be_integrated, subject_cannot_expand, and subject_can_expand_with_tithe terms.
  • [Bugfix] Edicts: Thought Enforcement no longer requires communications with another empire.
  • Assimilation
    • [Bugfix] Modifying a species to be Cybernetic (with the create_cybernetic_species_mod scripted effect) now removes the Psionic and Latent Psionic traits.
    • [Bugfix] Adjustments to when the Assimilation citizenship type is potential or allowed.
    • [Bugfix] Identity Sublimation and Transubstantiation Synthesis living standard types are now always invalid for robotic pops.
  • Species Traits
    • [Improvement] Presapient traits no longer cost trait points or trait slots.
    • trait_robot_notofthisworld (no localization?) now gives Pop Upkeep +10% instead of Robot Upkeep +10%
    • The Not of this World and trait_robot_notofthisworld traits now give +0.5 monthly physics research instead of +5% physics research from jobs.
  • Predefined solar systems
    • Alpha Refuge (Machine FE) ruined ringworld orbit angle changed from 270 to -90.
    • Adjusted orbit distances for the home system of the fanatic spiritualist Imperial Scion origin NPC.
    • [Bugfix] Venus now has the toxic_terraforming_candidate planet flag for Knight of the Toxic God origin empires starting in Sol, as do the two terraforming candidates in the toxic god finisher system, allowing them to trigger the Could Be Worse achievement.
  • [Bugfix] Ship sizes (except for colony ships) are now triggered_cost_modifiers in the ships economic category instead of distinct economic categories. I believe this is intended to fix the bug where ship cost modifiers specific to specific ship sizes weren't applied.
    • [New bug?] Defense platforms (ship_military_station_small) now have two identical triggered_cost_modifiers. Not sure if this has any in-game impact. EDIT: Whoops, not actually identical - one's a triggered_cost_modifier and the other's a triggered_upkeep_modifier.
  • Rules
    • [Bugfix] can_terraform_planet now verifies that a country exists before attempting to check its pre-sapients policy or if it has the terravore civic.
    • [Bugfix] pop_has_random_ethics now specifies the country it must not have bio-trophy citizenship in to trigger.
AI and NPC updates:
  • [Bugfix] agreement_presets: should_ai_use_for_proposals = no was added to preset_release_sector
  • [Bugfix] Fixed the bug where AI thought they could get away with colonizing FE holy worlds, and the Spiritualist FE can no longer use the Cleanse Holy Worlds war goal against empires that own the Head of Zarqlan.
  • [AI Improvement] ai_budget: some stuff related to armies in the energy and minerals budgets
  • [AI Improvement] buildings: Administrative Offices, Temples, and Uplink Nodes are no longer exempt_from_ai_planet_specialization. Synaptic Nodes already were.
    • [New bug?] Sacrificial Temples still aren't.
  • [AI Improvement] Defines to allow AI to destroy buildings & districts if they're overproducing resources.
    • AI_ADDITIVE_SUPERFLUOUS_INCOME_THRESOLD = 50
    • AI_MULTIPLICATIVE_SUPERFLUOUS_INCOME_THRESOLD = 1.3
  • Economic plans:
    • [AI Improvement] Base minerals target increased from 30 to 50.
    • [AI Improvement] Added subplan with base unity target of 40 for Machine empires.
  • Edicts
    • [AI Improvement] AI can no longer use the Industrial Maintenance edict (presumably because it's bad).
    • Changes to rare resource ship stat edicts (Exotic Gases as Fuel, Exotic Gases for Shield Boost, Volatile Ammunition, Volatile Reactive Armor, and Focusing Crystals) except for Volatile Explosives and Crystalline Sensors:
      • Now have the is_wartime_edict = yes attribute.
        • [New bug?] Volatile Explosives should probably also get is_wartime_edict = yes, even if AI isn't allowed to use it due to ai_weight = { weight = 0 }.
      • [AI Improvement] AI will now only use these edicts if it has more that 100 of the corresponding rare resource.
      • AI is still prohibited from using Volatile Explosives (even if explosives are their preferred weapon type), Volatile Land Clearance, and Crystalline Sensors.
  • Enclave station ship designs
    • [AI Improvement] Mercenary enclave stations no longer try to mount energy torpedoes in a Large slot, and swap their regular Torpedoes for Swarmer Missiles.
    • [Bugfix] Salvager stations replaced their G slots with M slots (they still mount Swarmer missiles).
    • Enclave stations had their rotation_speed reduced from 0.1 to 0.002 (enclave_station, sentinel_station, caravaneer_station_01, enclave_mercenary_station, enclave_salvager_station, enclave_shroudwalker_station)
Event adjustments
  • Negative Mass event chain (colony_events_3.txt)
    • colony.9815 (#Gateway appears): ship design name changed from "B_World_Corvette" to "NAME_B_World_Corvette".
    • colony.9820 ("An Old Code") now has fire_only_once = yes.
    • [Bugfix] colony.9870 (One Last Plea) can no longer fire after the situation has reached 100 progress.
    • colony.9880 (Desperate Drones): The Dominated Drones country is now created immediately as the event fires instead of after you choose an option, although the armies still aren't created until an option is selected.
    • colony.9889 & colony.9890 (Demands): New helper event does something with scopes. Losing the planet to the rebels now removes all their armies and adds 15 situation progress.
  • Living Planet event chain (distant_stars_events_1.txt)
    • [Bugfix] Living Planet event chain now aborts if the planet doesn't exist.
    • [Bugfix] distar.193 (Revelations): Now can only fire if event_target:living_planet_tar still exists.
  • galactic_community_events.txt
    • galcom.300 (# Quid Pro Quo, politics tradition event): Message target changed from root to root.capital_scope.
  • [Bugfix] marauder_events.txt
    • Most marauder events have been removed from the on_custom_diplomacy on_action.
    • Added new Marauder & Horde gatekeeper event (marauder.1)
    • The has_marauder_event = no and has_khan_event = no triggers have been removed.
    • The marauder_diplomacy_engaged country flag is no longer used.
  • necroids_events_2.txt
    • Messages created for subjects who sacrifice pops for their Death Cult overlord now have target = prev.capital_scope. (necroids.200 (Sacrifice: Togetherness), necroids.201 (Sacrifice: Harmony), necroids.202 (Sacrifice: Bounty))
  • nemesis_emperor_events.txt
    • [Bugfix] emperor.104 (# We Stand Alone) now fires emperor.105 (# Tally Rebels (HIDDEN), fixing the "issue which would prevent the Galactic Rebellion from forming if its instigator was the only independent (i.e. non-subjugated) empire left in the galaxy."
  • [Improvement] precursor_events.txt: # PRECURSOR ARTIFACT CATCH-UP
    • precursor.301 (Precursor Anomaly Found), precursor.310 (# Private Collector has Artifact), precursor.311 (# Neighbor Offers to Sell Artifact), and precursor.314 (# Neighbor Gifts Artifact) are now all fired by the on_five_year_pulse_country on_action instead of using a mean_time_to_happen of 20 years, with a 14.3% chance each (and a 42.9% chance of none).
    • 301, 310, and 311 have weight_multipliers of x1.25 if more than 100 years have passed, x0.75 if you had this event within the last 9 years, and x1.5 for On the Shoulders of Giants empires that have completed the Intercepting History event chain.
    • 301 has an additional weight_multiplier of x0.9 if gestalt (# NOTE: although gestalts are ineligible for the other events in this series, that actually increases their odds of receiving this one (as opposed to nothing at all). This is because 'on_actions' do not count weightings for random_events whose triggers will fail. The same therefore applies to regular empires who have already triggered the one-off events in this series.)
    • [New bug?] Unlike other events in this set, precursor.314 (# Neighbor Gifts Artifact) did not gain any weight_modifiers. Possible bug?
  • toxoids_events.txt
    • [Bugfix] Terraforming a Holy World into a Tomb World no longer angers the Spiritualist FE if you own the Head of Zarqlan.
  • unrest_events.txt
    • [Bugfix] unrest.161 (# Revolt Suppressed): Now requires event_target:revolt_planet to still exist.
  • utopia_on_action_events.txt
    • [Bugfix] New event - utopia.2654, fired on_ruler_back_to_pre_ruler_class, gives your ex-ruler the appropriate Chosen One trait for their new leader class after they leave office.
    • [Balance] utopia.2665 (# Monthly Covenant Rank Increase): Being a Fanatic opposed ethic now only reduces your covenant rank by -0.05 each month while it's less than 2.
    • [New bug?] utopia.2681 (# Covenant level 3 - Chosen One): If you have a covenant with the Eater of Worlds, it's now possible for the event to fail to find a valid leader for leader_2 because it's now possible for it to select a scientist (maybe also an envoy or heir, depending on how the random_owned_leader effect works), but only admirals, generals, and governors will be saved as event_target:leader_2.
      • This looks like a bug to me. Possibly it was intended to make it more likely to choose an admiral > general > governor, but that's not actually what the limit and if statement seem to do.
  • utopia_shroud_events.txt
    • [Balance] utopia.3303 (# Pick a Patron to contact): Having a patron's disliked ethic now makes them much less likely to be contacted. The modifier for the moderate version is now x0.3 (previously x0.7), and the modifier for the fanatic ethic is now x0 (previously x0.5).
    • [Bugfix] utopia.3346 (# Composer of Strands - Pops get devolved): Now requires a planet with at least 9 sapient, psionic pops that don't already have a presapient trait (previously it only required a planet with 9+ pops, at least one of which was psionic). Pops that already have a presapient trait can no onger be devolved repeatedly to collect multiple traits.
      • New scripted effect: create_random_devolved_species takes an existing species, adds a random presapient trait, and sets it to be nonsapient.
      • New scripted trigger: has_presapient_trait is pretty self-explanatory.
    • [New bug?] utopia.3400 (# Chosen One becomes ruler): Now permanently exiles your previous ruler as event_target:destituted_ruler_chosen_one, with no apparent way to bring them back.
      • Bug preventing empires that already have Imperial authority from getting the Divine Sovereign civic is not fixed.
No updates to weapons? In the previous beta, lasers and plasma were both terrible; the patch notes here claim to have addressed that (adding anti-hull bonus to lasers, making plasma high-damage but high-power) but it's not in your list.

Seriously though, thanks for the list!
 
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No updates to weapons? In the previous beta, lasers and plasma were both terrible; the patch notes here claim to have addressed that (adding anti-hull bonus to lasers, making plasma high-damage but high-power) but it's not in your list.

Seriously though, thanks for the list!
It actually completely slipped my mind to compare the contents of the weapon_components.csv files, and there are indeed changes!

  • Lasers now do +25% hull damage.
    • They now have marginally higher average hull damage than same-tier kinetics, instead of less.
  • Kinetic Artillery, Mega Cannons, Nanite Flak, and regular missiles have all lost their +25% hull damage bonus.
    • Autocannons are now the only non-energy weapon with a bonus to hull damage!
  • Plasma has been rebalanced:
    • Max damage increased by approximately +32% for Plasma I and +30% for Plasma II & III. Plasma III also gained +5% (S & L) / +6% (M) minimum damage.
      • This works about to about +21.6% average damage for Plasma I, +20.4% average damage for Plasma II, and +22.2% average damage for Plasma III.
    • Alloy cost increased by approx. +23%
    • Power usage increased relatively haphazardly by between +17.4% (medium Plasma I) and +35.3% (small Plasma III). Average increase is +24.6%, median is +22.4% (large Plasma II).
Min DMGMax DMGCostPower Use
plasma_1S; 12
M: 30
L: 72
S; 25 -> 33
M: 63 -> 83
L: 150 -> 198
S; 17 -> 21
M: 43 -> 53
L: 102 -> 126
S; -10 -> -13 (+30.0%)
M: -23 -> -27 (+17.4%)
L: -51 -> -63 (+23.5%)
palsma_2S; 16
M: 40
L: 96
S; 33 -> 43
M: 83 -> 108
L: 198 -> 258
S; 23 -> 28
M: 56 -> 69
L: 133 -> 164
S; -13 -> -17 (+30.8%)
M: -30 -> -36 (+20.0%)
L: -67 -> -82 (+22.4%)
plasma_3S; 20 -> 21
M: 50 -> 53
L: 120 -> 126
S; 43 -> 56
M: 108 -> 140
L: 258 -> 336
S; 30 -> 37
M: 73 -> 90
L: 173 -> 214
S; -17 -> -23 (+35.3%)
M: -39 -> -47 (+20.5%)
L: -88 -> -107 (+21.6%)

  • Regular and swarmer missiles have their accuracy increased back up to 100% (it was dropped down to 85% in the previous beta iteration).
  • The Energy Siphon tiyanki weapon increased in range from 50 to 60.
    • This means that while it still has lower damage against all defenses for the same cost and power usage as small Coilguns (and only beats the t0 Mass Drivers by 1.05 average damage vs. shields), it's no longer strictly worse.
  • Unbidden PD now has 50% shield penetration.
 
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Kinetic Artillery, Mega Cannons, Nanite Flak, and regular missiles have all lost their +25% hull damage bonus.
... OOF.

Look, I'm glad to see energy getting some love, and sometimes you need nerfs instead of buffs or power creep gets out of hand, but some of those changes seem really unnecessary.
  • Kinetic artillery: Fine, I guess? Just a straight nerf to artillery builds. If you're trying to make me put anything other than Kinetic Artillery in L slots, give me another weapon with similar range.
  • Mega cannons: Look, nobody was using those anyhow, not when lances and arc emitters are the only energy weapons a battleship can mount with range more than 80. I guess this is technically a nerf to pure-kinetic builds but those are a very bad idea to start with.
  • Nanite Flak: Oh come on, it's a unique leviathan reward tech, let it be fancy.
  • Missiles: Must you, really? We fiiiiinally get missiles to a pretty good place and then, this. I guess taking away the accuracy penalty is overall going to mean more DPS except against really hull-heavy targets (like outposts, the thing you build missile corvettes to deal with...), but accuracy can be fixed with computers anyhow. Also, this makes Swarmers strictly better (on a slot-equivalent basis) than normal missiles, which is... fine, I guess, but a little weird!
I guess lasers are the new early starbase-killer... possibly with PD lasers, since those probably still just do more overall damage than lasers even though they probably aren't strictly better than S Plasma anymore (hooray!).
 
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Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the combat computers as a concept.
  • No control at all over ship range/behavior if you haven't researched the first tier of computers. You just get whatever is default for the ship type, which might be terrible (e.g. missile corvettes do NOT want to use swarm behavior with no bonuses!).
  • It's hard to control the range precisely.
    • Instead you get stupid misbehaviors like titans actively keeping the enemy out of the range of their own Kinetic Artillery, because their Perdition Beam's 250 base range is > 2x the Kinetic Artillery's 120 base range. It is literally impossible to make a titan willing to close to artillery range except by removing the Perdition Beam!
    • Median weapon range is basically never a useful concept. If my destroyers have a mix of rails and lasers, I don't want to have to carefully ensure that there are enough lasers that the median weapon is a laser and this stupid ship will actually get close enough to an enemy station to hit it with said lasers!
    • Battleships shouldn't have to sacrifice either their long-range role or their spinal weapons to be able to consistently get within artillery/swarmer range.
  • The bonuses are kind of... questionable.
    • Swarm computer giving evasion is great... right up until you max out your evasion. Also for some reason it gives less rate-of-fire bonus.
    • Picket computer (and psychic computers) giving tracking is similarly great right up until your weapons+sensors guarantee you'll hit max tracking, at which point both options of computer are pretty useless for e.g. autocannon corvettes with an afterburner.
    • Line computer looks worse than it is if you don't know the kind of weird way that Stellaris computes to-hit chance (Inaccuracy is an additive - not multiplicative - miss chance with enemy evasion, and to-hit bonuses are an additive subtraction of miss chance _after_ evasion-minus-tracking, so Line computers can make even "perfectly accurate" weapons like disruptors hit more often against evasive enemies). Its to-hit bonus is still worthless if your weapons have full accuracy and more tracking than the enemy evasion, though (small disruptors, strike craft, etc.).
    • Artillery computer is the only one with a bonus that is both (mostly) obvious - the fact that it indirectly increases engagement range aside - and almost always good. With smaller weapons the range bonus is pretty trivial but it does still get you the first shot for each class of weapon.
    • Carrier computer is just... bad. The ability to engagement-lock an enemy fleet from across a system is nice (aside from the thing where you'll also obligatorily engage every enemy outpost which can slow down pursuits of fleets in hostile space) but everything else about it sucks. The ships that brought Artillery computers will still win the alpha strike, and also it's still flat impossible to make a hull with more than 50% of its weapon weight be strike craft. Worst of all, this computer has no DPS improvement at all!
    • Torpedo computer is also bad. Providing a bonus to damage rather than RoF isn't awful for high-alpha weapons like torpedoes, though the actual amount of the bonus is a little lacking. The fact that it only applies to explosive weapons sucks though, as it means you don't want to pair torpedoes with their obvious counterparts of autocannons (kinetic) or disruptors (energy), but rather with missiles (which are long-range weapons). It also really needs some additional bonuses to bring it in line with other computers.
  • The behaviors are also questionable!
    • Is there actually any value to "charge directly at the enemy" with the Torpedo computer? Seems like it means you'll spend a lot of time in the firing arc.
    • Why do Picket and (especially) Line computers refuse to keep the range open the way Artillery and Carrier computers do?
    • Does ship angle / firing arc even actually matter? That is, do ships ever have a weapon loaded and an enemy in range, but refuse to fire because of the arc? It seems like instead they snap around for just a moment to fire. Circling or evasive behavior only matters to damage dealt if turning speed is limited.
  • Restrictions by hull type are alsoquestionable!
    • Why can't Corvettes use anything that keeps long range? It was bad enough when they could only mount at most one long-range weapon, but now they can mount a full array of missiles but lack any ability to keep a long range.
    • Why can't anything except Corvettes swarm? It's a percentage-based evasion bonus, so large ships wouldn't meaningfully benefit from swarming, but there's mid-tier of ships (Cruiser/Frigate/Destroyer) that will sometimes have enough evasion to meaningfully exceed enemy tracking, and being able to exceed it further would be really good, and instead they are stuck with no choices except "afterburner, Y/N?" for meaningfully improving their evasion.
    • Why can't Titans use Line or even Picket computers? Titans are fully capable of mounting brawler weapons now, but they refuse to actually brawl. (In fact, as noted above, they refuse to let the enemy into range of their Artillery if they can help it, unless you take away their signature weapon and leave the T slot empty).
Strongly suggest one or more of the following:
  1. Let people select the target range for their ships, either directly or by tying it to a weapon of the designer's choice.
    1. Relatedly, let people choose whether their ships attempt to maintain range or not.
    2. At the least, you probably always should attempt to keep enemies out of your minimum range!
  2. Let people select the desired behavior for their ships even before unlocking upgraded computers.
  3. Do a balance pass on computer bonuses.
    1. Consider branching out a bit in what modifiers to add (e.g. Torpedo and Swarm ships want to be fast, at least in combat; Carrier wants hangar or strike craft bonuses)
    2. Don't make any computer straightforwardly worse at combat effectiveness than its peers.
    3. Try to avoid situations where any computer will predictably max out such that they're no point using it (as Swarm does once you have high-level drives and maybe a few admiral- or empire-level evasion bonuses).
  4. Either make ships take a meaningful amount of time to turn, or get rid of firing arc and behaviors (such as "fly directly at the enemy") that only make sense when firing arc is a concern.
    1. Note that this does NOT mean "make ships take a meaningful amount of time to change their direction of travel". That's already in the game, with momentum and acceleration being small but meaningful.
    2. However, with ~instant turning, a ship can spin around, fire off a torpedo or particle lance, spin back, and keep moving in the same direction as before with ~0 loss of speed or time unable to fire.
  5. Update the post-battle UI to see how much time weapons didn't do damage because they were loaded but unable to fire, for all the possible reasons.
    1. No valid target in range
    2. No valid target in firing arc
    3. No target with an above-zero chance of tracking? (At present the weapon just uselessly fires anyhow, showing up as a miss)
This is a very good post, I hope the devs take note.

The combat redesign seems to be well-intended and warranted, but at the moment no better balanced or put together than the previous iteration, with a lot of basic game design flaws. Stuff like this needs to be worked on by more than one person or a few people, especially if the people working on it lack game theory expertise. Hopefully with community feedback it will keep improving over time so that more options are viable and ship behaviour works as intended.
 
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so that more options are viable and ship behaviour works as intended
the frustrating thing is that ship behavior simply doesn't work. they've repeatedly claimed to have fixed it, and then my battleships with artillery range weapons simply swarm forwards like corvettes. now that they've added minimum range this means my battleships and cruisers CANNOT EVEN ATTACK becuase every combat behavior module is actually swarm no matter what it says.
 
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Incidentally, I also humbly recommend making the Energy and Maintenance Icons look more different. They almost look at the same especially at 3am when you have been playing for a few hours ;)

A part of my Mod specifically does that, you can download it and remove everything else you don't care about, or just subscribe to the full Mod:
https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/53942/Any
 
Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the combat computers as a concept.

[...snipped.]

The update was finally posted to GoG, so I was able to try this out for the first time.

I see a lot of problems with the combat computer implementation, too. I tried to document some of this here, where the problems are especially egregious with Hrozgar (which you can get if you play the Here be Dragons origin). Hrozgar has an Artillery combat computer, and it unfortunately has this gigantic space dragon (equivalent in strength to the Leviathan dragon bosses etc.) doing absurd things like running in circles trying to run away from a Space Amoeba (that it outclasses by at least two orders of magnitude in firepower) instead of just blasting it away, since Artillery combat computer prioritizes keeping range even when that doesn't really make sense. Hrozgar also suffers from the same problem that was mentioned with Titans, in that the dragon doesn't want to get close enough to use its Wing Skewer attack now... but that's where the majority of its damage output comes from.

(Edited to add a fun screenshot illustrating combat computer failure (Artillery combat computer): Leviathan-class Hrozgar is running in circles about the star system trying to escape to range from 3 baby Space Amoebas... instead of trying to engage them. I guess those little Space Amoebas are pretty scary if they can frighten off a gigantic Sky Dragon!)
 

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This does not strike me as an improvement, as that means no precusors of any kind until midgame. I'm sure that I'm far from the only one who has a distinct preference for one precursor over all others, so it's going to be exceedingly frustrating to play for a century and find out the outcome is not what was desired...
Yep, this is all around terrible. By the time you'll get there, chances are the whole exploration part might already be done and over. So an increased chance to discover them will do little. Hell, depending on luck you can finish your Precursor exceedingly early. So in multiplayer there might not even be one left at that point.
 
Yep, this is all around terrible. By the time you'll get there, chances are the whole exploration part might already be done and over. So an increased chance to discover them will do little. Hell, depending on luck you can finish your Precursor exceedingly early. So in multiplayer there might not even be one left at that point.
I basically dedicate my first science vessel to running through the sites (especially with the right scientist trait), and typically end up finishing the chain by 2220. If I dropped the start of the midgame to 2225, I would still run into a significant problem - most systems that would be unsurveyed at that point would be closer to other empires, and thus not necessarily accessible. The only hope would be that the two systems that spawn as a result of the Shoulders of Giants chain are flagged as containing a precursor!
 
Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the combat computers as a concept.

Thanks for posting this. I was trying to think of how to bring all this up and you did better than I could. I don't understand why the specific ranges being listed for each combat computer had to be removed...and replaced with generalities. One thing is absolutely certain, the old artillery battleships with 1XL and 4L is no longer the meta....with these new mechanics it doesn't seem like something you would even build at all. Also, the line and picket computers used to be two different things with two different specific ranges doing two different tasks......now they are both "medium" range and their description is vague at best. One hold position and the other moves to engage targets, but if both are medium range what does that even mean.

I had specific designs for specific roles in 3.5, now, at best it's going to take some time to figure that out again, at worst, it might not be possible. Just bring back the ranges on the computers and keep the other changes as they are and let's see how that works. I think it would be much better.
 
Thanks for posting this. I was trying to think of how to bring all this up and you did better than I could. I don't understand why the specific ranges being listed for each combat computer had to be removed...and replaced with generalities. One thing is absolutely certain, the old artillery battleships with 1XL and 4L is no longer the meta....with these new mechanics it doesn't seem like something you would even build at all. Also, the line and picket computers used to be two different things with two different specific ranges doing two different tasks......now they are both "medium" range and their description is vague at best. One hold position and the other moves to engage targets, but if both are medium range what does that even mean.

I had specific designs for specific roles in 3.5, now, at best it's going to take some time to figure that out again, at worst, it might not be possible. Just bring back the ranges on the computers and keep the other changes as they are and let's see how that works. I think it would be much better.
I don't actually think the old system with specific fixed ranges was better. It had a ton of really, really bad problems regarding ship behavior just making no sense, especially since artillery ships were routinely running 30% range bonuses and as such were combat effective at range 150 or more... but had to close to 80 (or closer) anyhow. It was also even worse than the current system in how computer restrictions constrained ship design; you could not, for example, ever make a battleship that was willing to get close enough to use autocannons under the old design (the closest any computer a BS could mount would go was 50). In that way, the new system is a decided improvement.

But it feels really bad to see them look at the busted system, take it out, and replace it with... basically, a sidegrade. They didn't address a bunch of the system's problems, and the ones they did address were handled sloppily. There's so much room for improvement still, so many clear problems that weren't addressed, so many situations where the took a bad situation (fixed ranges) and replaced it with a more complicated bad situation (median-weapon ranges that don't pull back or have range bonuses; max-weapon ranges that do pull back but will never get close enough to fire most of their weapons, etc.)
 
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Yep, this is all around terrible. By the time you'll get there, chances are the whole exploration part might already be done and over. So an increased chance to discover them will do little. Hell, depending on luck you can finish your Precursor exceedingly early. So in multiplayer there might not even be one left at that point.

If you want to have access to the solution to your problem, click on the image:


 
Recommending mods to solve a problem to someone who refuses to use mods on principle is not particularly helpful. It does not actually solve the problem, merely sweeps it under the rug.
 
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Recommending mods to solve a problem to someone who refuses to use mods on principle is not particularly helpful. It does not actually solve the problem, merely sweeps it under the rug.
Ah, sorry then, I actually started designing my own Mods when the Staff of my favorite games swept my complaints and suggestions under their rug.

Now I don't waste my precious time arguing with them, if there is something that bothers me or needs to be improved, I do it myself.

It's a shame that my knowledge of Stellaris is still thin and I have to put up with the current "mischiefs" of the developers with the combat computer system. But one day, when they're neglected, I'll get my hands on the combat and completely modify it... someday... :p
 
A further thought on a possible solution to ensuring that those who use Shoulders of Giants as an origin actually remain viably competitive on that front - spawn Precursor as normal, and then give the player a choice - to continue to explore their past, or to look into other mysteries. Choosing to look into the precursor mysteries gives a bonus to the research speed of the anomalies or archeology sites while slowing down research of the Benefactor sites, and choosing to explore one's own past gives the reverse.

That would at least make me happy with the change.