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Stellaris Dev Diary #34 - Clarke Patch

Hello everyone! As you may have noticed, there was no Stellaris development diary this week, because the team has been extremely busy working on the first free patch for the game, which we have named Clarke. Clarke is currently undergoing internal QA testing, and we hope to have a beta version of the patch out for you before the end of the week. Therefore, we decided to do a dev diary after all, detailing some of the fixes, changes and improvements coming in the patch.

Please note that the highlights below are just highlights, NOT exhaustive patch notes!

UI IMPROVEMENTS
A major target area for Clarke was the UI, particularly in regards to sectors and diplomacy. A few highlights:

  • Sectors can now be managed directly from the outliner.
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  • Diplomatic Notifications are now much more detailed.
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  • End of Combat interface has received a major face-lift.
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  • Habitability icons/tooltips now show you more detailed information, including which worlds in a system you can currently colonize.
    umRygrv.png

AI IMPROVEMENTS
Another major target area for Clarke was to address complaints regarding the AI, particular in sectors to sectors and warfare. A few highlights:
  • Greatly improved sector AI handling of pops, buildings, spaceports and mining stations.
  • Fixes for AI in end game crises.
  • Improvements and fixes to AI handling of its fleets.
  • Less restrictions on what the AI will trade and with who, especially in regards to border access.
  • In multiplayer, empires that are player-controlled will have a 'limited' AI for a period of 10 years if the player drops. The limited AI will not make any drastic changes to the empire, such as changing sectors, disbanding ships, declaring wars, etc, allowing a player to rejoin their empire pretty much as they left it.

We've also added a new option in galaxy setup where you can set the AI's overall aggressiveness.
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EMPIRE BUILDER IMPROVEMENTS
We also took some time to add a pair of highly requested features to the empire builder. Namely, the ability to write a biography for your species and empire, and the ability to customize ruler titles. Ruler titles are customized separately by gender, and will remain even if you change government type, so long as the new government is of the same type as the previous one (so changing from a Monarchy to another Monarchy will not clear your ruler titles, while changing from a Monarchy to a Democracy will).
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BALANCE CHANGES
While balance wasn't our main priority for Clarke, we nonetheless targeted a few major balance issues. A few highlights:
  • War score costs now scale to the size of your target, so you can take more planets from large empires but can't vassalize them in a single war.
  • The ability to stack evasion on Corvettes was nerfed.
  • Strike craft had their range substantially increased.
  • Ethics were rebalanced to make Xenophile/Xenophobe stronger picks, among other changes.
  • It is no longer necessary to control planets to demand them in war, but controlling planets that are set as wargoals are now worth more warscore.
  • Technology cost is now increased both by number of planets owned and size of population, instead of just population. Accordingly, the tech increase cost from population was lowered.

BUG FIXES
In addition to all this, Clarke naturally also includes dozens of fixes for bugs large and small. A few highlights:
  • Military Station maintenance is now correctly calculated (was far too high previously).
  • Numerous fixes to events, including fixing up the Old Gods event chain.
  • Fixed 'ghost' trade deal entries and trade deals silently failing when you traded above a certain percentage of your resource stockpiles.
  • Democracies that don't allow slavery will no longer get the Slaver mandate.
  • Difficulty settings are now available in multiplayer setup.

With Clarke almost finished, we're now switching over fully to working on the Asimov patch, as outlined in last week's dev diary. Where Clarke was mainly a fix and UI improvement patch, Asimov will target the midgame with new diplomatic features and event chains. More details about Asimov will be released in development diaries over the next few weeks, but if you have any questions about the Clarke patch, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.
 
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May I ask what the specific changes to the xenophile/phobe ethics were?

And on a similar note, the Theocratic Republic government seems a bit OP as it gives both +2 Core Planets and ethics drift which is objectively better than the corresponding materialist government which just gives +Cores. Is that up for rebalance?

Thanks :)
 
Is the AI smart enough to balance food production on fully grown planets that have a lot of food tiles or will it still build farms everywhere if I don't uncheck the "respect tile resource" option (which might have bad effects on other planets)?
 
Technology cost is now increased both by number of planets owned and size of population, instead of just population. Accordingly, the tech increase cost from population was lowered.

Will the penalty from number of planets take into account planet size? For example less penalty for a smaller size 10 planet and a bigger penalty for a size 25 one? I"m concerned if it is per planet then it may make smaller planets less worthwhile to colonise if you don't want a research hit.
 
I have an important question, will Asimov patch brings some robots related stuff ? Also, for the K. Dick patch, will you tell us if androids dreams of electric sheep ?


Also, I know those are only highlights, but did you fix the endgame lag ? I know the last patch was a major improvement, but sadly it was not the only source of lag, and many of us still suffer from it, no matter the computer.
 
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Hello! Thanks for great looking patch! I have one question though.

Will the impoved sector AI enslave/emancipate pops on controlled planets if I have 100% slavery tolerance? It's really a PITA to check all sector's planets and enslave/emancipate the slaves based on what tile they're working on. That should be a very easy script - enslave them if they're working on minerals/food and don't do this if they're working somewhere else.
 
End of Combat interface has received a major face-lift.
VZz7pT8.png

If I have two different types of, say, destroyer size ships in a battle, will the new interface tell me which ones were destroyed, or just how many of each size were destroyed?

Habitability icons/tooltips now show you more detailed information, including which worlds in a system you can currently colonize.
umRygrv.png
If I have more than one species in my empire, will this tooltip state which species has the 80% habitability? By the time I reach endgame, I usually have every type of planet available at 80% for some species in my empire.

We've also added a new option in galaxy setup where you can set the AI's overall aggressiveness.
VKhKVgi.png
Any chance this interface will remember my past choices? I prefer to play on a large, four armed spiral map, and it is somewhat annoying to have to adjust those settings every time. If we could customize the default setting, that would be great.
 
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Hey Wiz & Team,

Great work - I am hooked at first launch, really great game but as you agree in DDs, still some work to be done to make it a classic.

One thing I can think of is: please give the player ability to customize what appears in the Outliner.

For example, if a player has 25 fleets across the universe, in "parked" state, they are not really too important to display in outliner.
I realize this is a matter of taste but currently (unless I'm missing it somehow) player has no option to "hide" some items selectively in Outliner (planets/civ ships/mil fleets/Obs posts and so on).

Going back to 25 parked fleets across universe example, some players may not care about 20 of them but would like to actually see 1 per each zone (say east/west/north/south and central). Currently we have to see all 25.

You already have this feature in other games, e.g.: CK2 "important character" filters.
 
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Cheers m dears for continuing to iron out wrinkles as well as looking to improve and expand the game.

This is why I've been hooked on Paradox games for so long.

Keep up the good work
 
Well I must say paradox does try to improve the game. This is a good sign. By nerfing evasion stacking does that mean less % per upgrade or does it mean a change from additive multiplication to separate multiplication of evasion? Additive evasion is how is works now 1-(a+b+c+d+n) Separate multiplication of evasion works like (1-a)(1-b)(1-c)(1-n) etc.
Currently it is possible to make corvettes immune to particle and energy weapons.
 
I would ask if they will fix ship movement ... in my case when I get more quantity boat moving them slows or gets stuck , you can see in my publication of bugs???? Thanks
 
You mentioned:
  • Fixes for AI in end game crises.
What does that translate too? Will the AI finally be able to fight back against the various crises? Being the only one responsible for stopping the Prethoryn, Unbidden, and AI is kind of a chore. Especially on some map types where it can literally start hours away from you in terms of diplomatic negotiations, wars, and travel.

Currently it appears that they don't really coordinate at all to deal with the crises and treat them like other galactic fauna instead of the serious threat they are. This is despite that everyone gets a mutual threat bonus in terms of relations when one shows up, causing them to ally up and make a super alliance/start throwing deals around.

I know of a few bugs there too. Like that AI uprisings have issues where AI empires that build them will blithely hand their planets over to the enemy by virtue of them just continually not getting that building robots during an AI uprising is a death sentence.
 
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Great stuff here. Also within all of Wiz' replies.

Will there an option to rename uplifted species or subspecies (due to genetic modification)?
 
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Does that mean I astill have to wait for the asimov update for battle wreckage to scan after a war ends suddenly thrugh AI surrender?

And I took a planet In a war for my self to revive a small AI empire I couldn`t save before it got annexed. Now I can't create a vassal to release this species. The Faction for the species whant to rejoin their former overlord instead of becomming a independed nation. Is this a bug or intetend?

Does that mean, we finaly can see (like in EU,CK games) with wargoals are set in a third party war?

Other than that keep up get good work You have done so far.
 
Will we get a notification if an alien pet resource appears under a tile? Also, will the sector AI know to leave the tile blank and not plop a science lab on it? I had this resource appear in my empire but never knew about it until I checked a tile by pure chance. I understand they like appearing on tiles that start with a society resource (once the pet shows up, it's a 1 pet + 5 society tile), so it's highly likely that players accidently supress it. Better yet would be if Research Labs didn't supress it.
 
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Sounds good. I look really forward to the better sector AI and improvements to the ship balance. Hopefully it won't just tip the scales to another ship type (i.e. Battleships).