[Dev Team] 3.0.3 Beta Patch Released (checksum 927c)

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Hmm, the revision to 3.0.3 is definitely a step in the right direction (Crime Lord Deal having real effects is pretty cool), but it's sad to see Clerks left off at "literally worse for being enabled", and it's very worrying to see automigration nerfed, when it already felt kind of slow as a Machine Empire.

On Clerks, the problem is just a lack of scaling bonuses. They can't keep up, and so pretty much only specialized empires would even want them, but every empire has them.
Suggestions (ideally both):

1. Change Society techs to have percent modifiers to Clerk trade value, including a repeatable to rival Technicians (or just remove the one for Technicians so Dyson Spheres aren't as pointless as well).
2. Change additive Admin Cap techs in Society to give +1 Admin Cap or Clerk job, and remove the +15 Admin Cap repeatable (so Clerks become important later to stave off Empire Sprawl, rather than research being able to do it itself, and eventually as you grow and grow you do need more Bureaucrat/Clerk jobs).

As for migration...I must bluntly state that Transit Hubs are absolutely stupid because I simply can't spare starbase capacity most of the game for every single planet in my huge empire to have people shuttled away.
Suggestions (ideally one of these, not both):

1. Make the Transit Hub affect not just planets in the system, but all within so many jumps based on starbase level, so that I can slap one on a trade station or bastion or something that happens to be near many planets to get them all under the effect.
2. Have a tech that depends on something like Starhold make the first starbase upgrade not count for capacity (or count for half), so we can have little ones to just be Transit Hub/trade starbases peppering our empire.

 

[TSBasilisk]

Carrying over from the other thread, I believe the Doomsday Origin needs some work to be viable without being funneled into a specific build.

Specifically I'm referring to the Influence cost for moving pops off your homeworld. Even with Evacuation Protocols to halve the resettlement cost, you're looking at around 500 total Influence to completely evacuate your world (including the 100 for the Edict and 200 for the abandonment). That's the equivalent of about 13 years of Influence during the period of the game where Influence is even more important than usual.

Prior to the latest update this wasn't as much of an issue as resettlement push was strong enough that you didn't need to manually do so yourself. However the 5% starting value applies across the board, so you'll end up needing to leave pops unemployed for a year or more to get them to resettle themselves which means a lot of lost production early in the game.

The Corvee System civic effectively does an end run around this requirement but I don't think an Origin should be forced to use a specific Civic in order to be functional; the same with using Nomadic as one of your traits just to reduce the cost.

The devs did mention considering removing this Influence cost for Doomsday evacuation in one of the early dev diaries for Nemesis, I believe. Here are some options I see:

• Modify Evacuation Protocols to remove the Influence cost for resettling off your homeworld - as a potential balance, this could instead cost extra energy, minerals, etc.
• Modify Evacuation Protocols to significantly increase base resettlement rate off the homeworld - rather than starting at a 5% chance per month, maybe 20%
• Add a resettlement push to the Doomsday planetary modifier which increases with each tier
• Add an influence reduction to resettlement on the Doomsday planetary modifier which increases with each tier
• Reward the player with Influence for successfully evacuating a certain number of pops off the homeworld, with a bonus payout at the end if the entire world is evacuate before it explodes

 

[Nebbie Zebbie]

Carrying over from the other thread, I believe the Doomsday Origin needs some work to be viable without being funneled into a specific build.

Specifically I'm referring to the Influence cost for moving pops off your homeworld. Even with Evacuation Protocols to halve the resettlement cost, you're looking at around 500 total Influence to completely evacuate your world (including the 100 for the Edict and 200 for the abandonment). That's the equivalent of about 13 years of Influence during the period of the game where Influence is even more important than usual.

Prior to the latest update this wasn't as much of an issue as resettlement push was strong enough that you didn't need to manually do so yourself. However the 5% starting value applies across the board, so you'll end up needing to leave pops unemployed for a year or more to get them to resettle themselves which means a lot of lost production early in the game.

The Corvee System civic effectively does an end run around this requirement but I don't think an Origin should be forced to use a specific Civic in order to be functional; the same with using Nomadic as one of your traits just to reduce the cost.

The devs did mention considering removing this Influence cost for Doomsday evacuation in one of the early dev diaries for Nemesis, I believe. Here are some options I see:

• Modify Evacuation Protocols to remove the Influence cost for resettling off your homeworld - as a potential balance, this could instead cost extra energy, minerals, etc.
• Modify Evacuation Protocols to significantly increase base resettlement rate off the homeworld - rather than starting at a 5% chance per month, maybe 20%
• Add a resettlement push to the Doomsday planetary modifier which increases with each tier
• Add an influence reduction to resettlement on the Doomsday planetary modifier which increases with each tier
• Reward the player with Influence for successfully evacuating a certain number of pops off the homeworld, with a bonus payout at the end if the entire world is evacuate before it explodes

The third one is definitely a good idea regardless, but I think they really should go further and just cut out the middle man and remove the edict, and waive (most, if not all) influence costs on resettling pops away from a world that's "doomed" (not just Doomsday homeworld, but also a planet being about to be hit by a Colossus or under Armageddon bombardment). It's absurd there's a specialty edict that exists just for this challenge mode and there's no generic "hey idiot, your planet is literally being destroyed, stop whining politically about being moved off it".

 

[OgMummbles]

The third one is definitely a good idea regardless, but I think they really should go further and just cut out the middle man and remove the edict, and waive (most, if not all) influence costs on resettling pops away from a world that's "doomed" (not just Doomsday homeworld, but also a planet being about to be hit by a Colossus or under Armageddon bombardment). It's absurd there's a specialty edict that exists just for this challenge mode and there's no generic "hey idiot, your planet is literally being destroyed, stop whining politically about being moved off it".

If your beseiged and being bombarded their definately should not be migration leaving the planet, it's a blockade, those pops are gone unless your fleet saves them. Refugees later fleeing the occupation, but not huge numbers. Definately no forced resettlement while under seige thats just gaming the system and taking resources from the victor that he/she earned.

In Fact, if you want to resettle during wartime, there should be transport ships for the enemy to capture, no way you should be able to empty a planet with a few hundred clicks and deprive the enemy their hard earned booty. Those pops should be vulnerable, this sounds like a huge multiplayer issue.

 

[zZander56]

Really enjoying the beta patch overall.

The changes to criminals and, consequently, criminal syndicates are much appreciated. There's of course still a few striking issues with syndicates, but this certainly helps.

The buff to trade value that clerks provide *actually* make them into a desirable job to fill. I've now had a game based on clerks and trade value go mostly smoothly, though the scaling issue is still present.

 

[Iosue Yu]

IMO there should be an ethical flag to make empires more flavourful too
If fanatic militarist always build one fortress, if militarist, 50% chance to build one.
Same goes for spiritualists and temples.
I'd say the same goes for authoritarians and noble estates or slave facilities - but in the latter case they're now used for slave transporting so it should probably be 100% built on every planet, if the planet has any worker jobs at all.

I respectfully disagree.

Fortress should be built regardless of ethics. They should be built when there are rooms for militarisation. AI should even try to build a new City District to just build a Fortress at a certain point in a game. It's called parallel militarisation. So you don't just build more fleets while ignoring completely your lands, especially these Soldier Jobs provide Naval Capacity.

 

[Dragatus]

It's a question of effectiveness vs flavor. Do you want AI empires to be a challenge for the player or do you want to be better able to pretend AI empires have values they aspire to and have that reflected in the way they act. Ideally we'd all probably like both, but sometimes the two conflict with each other so it becomes a matter of which one has priority. And there is no right or wrong answer here, we all have our preference on the right balance between the two.

 

[Jamaican Castle]

Aren't they a dangerous tech, seems like you'd want to manually choose wether to break the galaxy or not.

Acquiring the technology is dangerous, but (IIRC) the Unbidden don't actually care if you use it or not. (And your civilian ships and transports will auto-upgrade in any case.) It's not really more dangerous to stock your fleets with jump drives than not.

I don't know if the same applies to sapient combat computers, but I assume it does, since the AI uprising's fleets are prescripted.

but also a planet being about to be hit by a Colossus or under Armageddon bombardment

I'm a little uncertain of the mechanics of a whole pop resettling from a planet being bombarded intensely enough to render it lifeless. Maybe if resettling took time, like purging? So you can grab a few pops relatively easily, but if it's a major planet you might not have enough time.

I agree with OgMummbles that paying a minor amount of energy to pull 40 pops out of the attackers' grasp instantly is probably not great gameplay.

 

[Cronos988]

So... any chance we'll be getting anything related to 3.0.3 at GOG?

If not, can someone please tell me what values I should change in defines for the 3.0.2 to come closer to the new meta standards?

So, LOGISTIC_POP_GROWTH_CEILING should be set to 1.5

REQUIRED_POP_GROWTH_SCALE should be set to 0.25

REQUIRED_POP_ASSEMBLY_SCALE I'm not sure, I'm guessing 0.25 as well.

What else should I change there? Anyone knows?

Pop growth floor should be 0.1, not 0.01. That should be all.

 

[Naxirian]

I still think this bug of surveying Primitives is caused by mods.

I got rid of the bug happening by disabling the More Events Mod, and I saw another person writing (on Reddit, or maybe on Steam) that he got rid of the bug by disabling the StarNet AI mod.

So I don't think it's a mod in vnailla per se. Maybe they changed something in vanilla that caused at least two very different mods to begin malfunctioning? But even if so, it's up to the mod makers to update their mods.

Just did some testing and checked with my friends, the bug is still occurring in the vanilla game for us even with fresh installs and all mods removed. Seems to be a vanilla issue. Others are also reporting the same issue with no mods on reddit. Unfortunate but I'm sure they'll fix it quickly.

 

[slv]

Just did some testing and checked with my friends, the bug is still occurring in the vanilla game for us even with fresh installs and all mods removed. Seems to be a vanilla issue. Others are also reporting the same issue with no mods on reddit. Unfortunate but I'm sure they'll fix it quickly.

I think whether the bug occurs is determined at the moment when you find the primitive. So if you had a mod that is not 3.0.3-compatible at this point of time, you will get a bugged primitive planet and nothing will fix it anymore.

You can check if you are getting the bug in the new modless games (you can increase the primitive slider to make sure it's quick to check), I don't think you will.

 

[Naxirian]

I think whether the bug occurs is determined at the moment when you find the primitive. So if you had a mod that is not 3.0.3-compatible at this point of time, you will get a bugged primitive planet and nothing will fix it anymore.

You can check if you are getting the bug in the new modless games (you can increase the primitive slider to make sure it's quick to check), I don't think you will.

Yeah you're right I just tested it further on a brand new game and it's specifically Starnet AI that's messing it up for me. I can run all my other mods but not that one. I heard there's another mod that can cause it too, I believe it was More Events Mod, though I don't use that one personally.

I've just noticed the author of Starnet AI has a different version of the mod specifically for the 3.0.3 beta which appears to fix the issue. Didn't notice that before as it's not part of the main mod branch. I'll give that a go.

*EDIT* I just tested it and it appears the Starnet AI beta branch fixes the issue.

 

[RobInconformista]

Hello everyone!

As was announced yesterday we have been working on another patch for Nemesis for you all to try out in an open beta. The reason we are doing this as an open beta is to be able to gather some feedback on the changes that we've made so far and make changes where we deem necessary. If you have feedback on specifically the Pop Growth system you can go this thread to post:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-3-0-3-open-beta-feedback-megathread.1470854/

Just make sure you follow the guidelines that we've set

We will continue to fix some more issues internally and update the beta branch as needed until we are happy with a final product that we can release sometime at a later date. If you have any bugs that you think we don't know about, please make sure to post a bug report in the bug forums and we will get some eyes on it!

For now, here's the changelog so far:

....

Great job!! I could see how Dick 3.0 improved Stellaris massively, could live with the growth because I enjoyed adapting strategy and using game mechanics like spawning off autonomous sectors as vassals, that haven't been optimal since bureaucrats were added enabling super-wide super-sprawl pop spam.

The latest patch, at first I worried that my tuned Megacorp Empire would be too OP as my clerks were nearlyt starting technicians for energy +5 with +2 amenities so beneficial to other pop productivity on home world. The only issue was no free job slots, so I built a resource silo quick as soon as I had 100 extra minerals & cleared the sprawl with help of sold energy, gaining a pop and then building other new jobs just in time for the first pop created via growth.

Playing for long and using the technology and resource +1 buildings, I see that a balance has been struck; despite Galactic Doorstep origin I can now develop and seek to use diplo to become secure. I actually even cut the number of clerks down as I had some event caused economic challenges to overcome (which is fun, it shouldn't be too easy).

The decision to add +1 to the base production, rather than percentages is a great simplification, easy to explain and reduces the mental arithmetic deciding if it was good to upgrade or not. Now they give a quick 1 job with popwer up, for a little more upkeep, so are usable earlier.

On the growth, I had concerns that it favoured too much advanced starts (also Xphobe with a free+10% growth modifier), as they could hit faster growth years earlier, because they began with more pops. The game feels like it's building a little slower, the balance between open jobs and pops is far superior.

Of course I have issues, which I shall submit to the bug/suggestions; BUT basically this is by far the BEST Stellaris yet.

 

[FireKahuna]

Steam Workshop::! Primitives Survey Fix

steamcommunity.com

Made a patch for the Primitive survey bug if mods are causing it, needs testing but should fix this on new saves for all mods. For vanilla players, idk.

 

[OgMummbles]

Acquiring the technology is dangerous, but (IIRC) the Unbidden don't actually care if you use it or not. (And your civilian ships and transports will auto-upgrade in any case.) It's not really more dangerous to stock your fleets with jump drives than not.

I don't know if the same applies to sapient combat computers, but I assume it does, since the AI uprising's fleets are prescripted.

Fairly certain that researching the technology does nothing, using it is what triggers the unbidden crisis to be selected, if it auto equipped to your ships there would be a heavy bias towards unbidden endgame instead of other crisis's

 

[Hemothep]

Fairly certain that researching the technology does nothing, using it is what triggers the unbidden crisis to be selected, if it auto equipped to your ships there would be a heavy bias towards unbidden endgame instead of other crisis's

Fairly certain that the crisis trigger events just check if any country in the galaxy has researched that tech.
And there is a bias towards unbidden.

 

[Dragatus]

That is correct. The crisis trigger event checks for technology, not if it's being put to use.

    trigger = {
        is_crises_allowed = yes
        end_game_years_passed >= 0
        OR = {
            end_game_years_passed >= 50
            default_endgame_early_start_triggers = yes
            any_country = {
                is_country_type = default
                OR = {
                    has_technology = tech_jump_drive_1
                    has_technology = tech_psi_jump_drive_1
                }
            }
            is_active_resolution = resolution_galacticstudies_extradimensional_experimentation
        }
        NOT = { has_global_flag = galactic_crisis_happened }
    }

 

[Colonizor48]

Can you add some more espionage features to the base game without DLC? Without DLC the espionage system makes the game barely playable from my experience. Not every operation, but basic ones like recruiting agent and cells, maybe stealing tech. Basicly you should be able to do all the subterfuge operations except for the imperium ones without the DLC. It would still have plenty of content. Just making the base game more playable.

 

[Diettinger]

Hello everyone!

As was announced yesterday we have been working on another patch for Nemesis for you all to try out in an open beta. The reason we are doing this as an open beta is to be able to gather some feedback on the changes that we've made so far and make changes where we deem necessary. If you have feedback on specifically the Pop Growth system you can go this thread to post:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-3-0-3-open-beta-feedback-megathread.1470854/



Please note that 3.0.3 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.

Think you guys could squeeze this little observation into the patch as well? Adding weights for job for the AI based on their energy, mineral, etc needs/deficits looks like a really good way to improve the AI's gameplay.... and relatively simple to enact.

Can we talk about the methodology for job weights and fixing pop-job allocation?

So job weights, they are interesting. A huge amount of importance is placed on the "individual" - traits and strata (ironic, given the game uses planned economies, but I digress). Below, I look at how these job weights work to allocate pops - and...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

M & S

 

[Kommunist Fried Chicken]

You really don't want to improve Espionage? Espionage is supposed one of the feature of Nemesis. At least add some powerful operations that is only available to player, to give players some other options to defeat enemies. Player-only is ok, AI hardly build Judgements or Megastructures, but they are still in the game.