Stellaris Dev Diary #412 - 4.3.0 ‘Cetus’ Preliminary Release Notes

by Eladrin

Tomorrow's Dev Diary has so many patch notes that we're publishing it today so that you can read them all. The release candidate is not yet live; tune back in tomorrow morning for access. -- LadyDz.

It’s time. 

The Stellaris 4.3.0 ‘Cetus’ update is targeted for release next Tuesday, on the 17th of March.

Many thanks to everyone who helped us throughout the Open Beta. While there are some things that didn’t get into 4.3.0, we’re going to continue working on them for the future - whether that be in a post-release 4.3 patch, in 4.4, 4.5, or beyond.

4.3.0 ‘Cetus’ includes massive rebalancing of ships and the economy, and significant work on performance. There’s been some work on Stability, but we haven’t hit the targets I want, so it will remain one of the primary focuses for the Custodian programmers as we go on. Overall, we’ve hit the point where I believe it’s time to bring the changes to the live servers though, while iteration and polish continues.

Here are the 4.3.0 Preliminary Release Notes, which printed out would come out to 24 A4 pages - 33% longer than 3.1 ‘Lem’. We couldn’t have done this without you.

The 4.3.0  'Cetus' update focuses on economic balance and performance. Significant changes have been made to the economy to rebalance it at a generally lower power level, with fewer bonuses or modifiers that stack non-linearly to extreme levels. Some traits, buildings, or district specializations may have changed or even been removed. Certain challenges that have been trivialized over the years may be much stronger, especially roaming space fauna, crises, and fallen empires.

Navies have received major changes intended to reduce their total ship counts, making each ship individually more valuable and, we feel, more interesting. Ship defenses have been improved (especially for larger hulls), so combats may last longer than before. Be aware that the Perdition Beams on Titans now deal collateral damage to nearby ships!

Behind the scenes the Custodian programmers focused heavily on performance and stability. You should find the game significantly faster and more stable from the very start until the end-game.

Thank you for playing Stellaris! 

(And additional thanks to the many players that helped us and provided feedback during the 'Cetus' Open Beta!)

• Added the possibility to hotjoin while other players are hotjoining.

• Added Refugee Attraction mechanics:

  • Refactored how Refugees are calculated, they are now more likely to flee to countries ruled by their own species if available and they will pick planets in a smarter manner.

  • Added Refugee Attraction, now Civics like Free Haven will make more refugees show up, while allowing Slavery will reduce the likelihood that people will seek refuge in your empire.

• After a review of Unemployment mechanics, we felt that they did not add significantly to the game.

  • All unemployed pops now demote to Civilian (or Maintenance Drone, as appropriate) at the end of the month.

  • Removed the "Rising Unemployment" event chain.

  • Living Standards have been adjusted.

    • All living standards now include information for Slaves, just in case you find some way to get them unusual and unexpected standards like Utopian Abundance.

    • Happiness penalties on lower living standards now apply to Civilians.

  • Removed Demotion Time bonuses as they’re no longer relevant.

  • Resettlement costs are now the same across all strata. (Since demotion is now immediate at the end of the month, this prevents an undesired element of micromanagement where you would want to fire any pops you wanted to resettle.)

• Improved grammar for French, German, and Spanish translations of empire names for certain randomized empires..

• Reverted the materialist empire being forced to use Cybernetic portraits if you own The Machine Age

• Renamed Mercantile and Unyielding traditions to Commerce and Fortification to match the naming structure of all other traditions.

• Job automation is now moved from district to planet. This means that “Technician Automation” will apply to all technician jobs on a planet instead of only jobs granted from the Generator District.

• Field Modulation, Eco Simulation, and Geothermal Fracking technologies are now marked as Gateway technologies for Rural District Specialization.

• Improvement "Scorched World Heralds" civics now mention that diplomacy with other Thermophiles is possible

• Option text for Rogue Servitors discovering alien life is tonally appropriate

• First Robot timeline event blocked for machine species

• When multiple End Game Crises are active in galaxy settings, End Game Crises are now allowed to spawn 25 years after another crisis has spawned instead of being blocked while there is an active crisis.

• Ship and Fleet Rebalancing:

  • Ship Naval Capacity usage has changed significantly.

    • Corvettes: 5

    • Frigates: 8

    • Destroyers: 10

    • Cruisers: 20

    • Battleships: 40

    • Titans and Bio-Titans: 80

    • Juggernauts and Colossi: 100

    • Maulers: 4/6/8

    • Weavers: 8/12/16

    • Harbingers: 16/24/32

    • Stingers: 32/48/64

    • Most ships (including Space Fauna and Event Ships) in general have 5x the Naval Capacity usage they used to.

      • Nanite Swarmers are size 1

      • Increased base and modified Vivarium capacity to work with new numbers

      • Galactic Nemesis Marauding ships have 20% less naval capacity usage than their size would normally require. (Corvettes: 4, Destroyers: 8, Cruisers: 16)

  • Increased base Naval Capacity to 50.

  • Rebalanced Naval Capacity techs

  • Titan class weapons now deal area-of-effect damage if they successfully hit their target:

    • Perdition Beams now deal damage to enemy ships within a certain range of the target.

    • Ion Cannons deal less Collateral Damage (at a shorter range) than Titan Perdition Beams.

    • Added Ion Cannon Collateral Damage to Starfire Cannons.

  • Armor and Shields have been rebalanced, and now higher tiers also add a small amount of Armor or Shield Hardening as appropriate.

    • These grant (tier - 1)% Armor or Shield Hardening

  • Higher tier Ship and Component costs and upkeep have generally been increased. 

    • Increased the costs to build larger and higher tier ship sections and ship components. This includes the Fallen Empire ships from Cosmogenesis.

  • Crystal Hull plating now also grants flat damage reduction.

    • Crystal-Infused Plating:

      • S: 50 Hull, -1 Damage

      • M: 150 Hull, -2 Damage

      • L: 450 Hull, -3 Damage

    • Crystal-Forged Plating:

      • S: 100 Hull, -2 Damage

      • M: 300 Hull, -3 Damage

      • L: 900 Hull, -4 Damage

  • Increased the power usage of Torpedoes and Energy Torpedoes on standard ships

  • Frigates are now faster and sturdier, moving at Destroyer speed instead of Cruiser, have +1 Utility and Aux Slot, and use Destroyer sized reactors

  • Base Hull for ships have been adjusted.

  • The multiplicative damage bonus Torpedoes and Torpedo-like weapons gain has been reduced to 20% of their former values because ship sizes are 5x larger. (Effectively no change.) The maximum bonus has been increased.

  • Increased Federation and GDF fleet sizes to match new systems.

  • Increased bonus from Galactic Mobilization to match new systems.

  • Added nanite upkeep for nanotech ships.

  • Space Fauna now have 10% Armor and Shield Hardening per rarity tier for each tier above Common

  • Crisis Changes:

    • Reduced the power of the Prethoryn, Contingency, Extradimensionals, Great Khan, Diadochi, Tempest, and Dessanu fleets by approximately a third.

    • Reduced the power of Awakened Fallen Empires and Cetana's fleets by roughly half.

    • Reduced difficulty based scaling on the Grey Tempest and Khan. Roaming Tempest fleets may not always have a Mothership on lower difficulties. (Garrison fleets are unchanged.)

    • Note that since player power has decreased by a larger percentage, this will make these Crises a much greater challenge than pre-4.3.

  • Increased many sources of Command Limit and Naval Capacity.

    • Galactic Force Projection, War Games (Supremacy Traditions), and Better Glandular Stimulation (Behemoth Fury Crisis Perk) now grant Command Limit multipliers instead of flat values.

  • Reduced the minimum fleet power necessary to trigger the fight with the ambushing Cutholoid to 600. It'll be a tough fight and you'll probably lose some ships, but usually win.

  • Torpedo Combat Computers (and Bio Combat Computers or Fauna Neurochips) have been renamed to Siege Combat Computers, and also add +50% / +65% / +80% / +100% damage vs. Starbases and Bombardment Damage.

    • No bioships use Siege Combat Computers, as Mauler mandibles already do a fine job of eating Starbases.

  • The Dimensional Fleet Astral Action has been adjusted to the reduced general fleet sizes.

    • Summons a number of Escorts equal to the number of Astral Rifts you have explored, and Cruisers equal to half that number, rounded down.

  • Bubbles (and misnamed variants) no longer uses up Naval Capacity

  • Anchorages now give +5 Naval Capacity, +3 with a Naval Logistics Office.

    • Anchorages now have Trade Upkeep equal to the Naval Capacity they are providing.

  • Soldiers are now Specialist (or Complex Drone) jobs with 1 Alloy upkeep.

• Economic Rebalancing:

  • Many sources of Unity production have been reduced.

  • Increased base Unity production of empires from 5 to 10.

  • Many traits that reduced Housing usage have been rebalanced.

  • Colony Designations now universally add Job Efficiency to their appropriate Jobs.

  • Planetary Ascension now increases the Designation effect by 10% per tier instead of 25%.

  • Many sources of Empire Size modifiers have been reduced.

    • The base amount of Empire Size generated by pops has been halved.

      • Especially things that reduce Empire Size from Pops down to 0.

    • The base amount of Empire Size generated by colonies has been increased to 20.

  • Effects and modifiers that granted jobs per pop have been replaced with static job numbers.

  • Reduced most job-based sources of research, but also reduced tech costs by half. This indirectly improves space-based deposits.

    • Slightly improved mineral deposits on Asteroids and energy deposits of many stars.

  • Many buildings and modifiers that increased job output have been reduced.

  • Most stability bonuses have been reduced to one half to one third of their previous values.

    • The intention of this change is to make Stability generally more important and harder to pin at 100, and make things like +1 or +2 Stability effects more valuable.

  • Most job efficiency modifiers have been reduced.

  • Some production modifiers have been turned into job efficiency modifiers.

  • Ascension situations now progress slower.

    • Exception: Endbringers. Tick-tock.

  • More strategic resource production has been moved to the strategic resource producing district specializations. Significantly reduced the amount given for free by the strategic resource deposits without the specialization.

  • Special planetary deposits are now 4x more common.

  • Made some unique planetary features more interesting.

  • Subsidy Edicts now grant +20% or 10% Efficiency and +0.5 Trade Upkeep

  • Automation Building Changes:

    • Assembly Patterns and Construction Templates are now Tier 2 and 4 technologies.

    • Automation Buildings are now job specific, and no longer increase their upkeep based on district count.

      • Automated Worker or Simple Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 4 Energy per 100 jobs.

      • Automated Specialist or Complex Drone Jobs increase their upkeep by 8 Energy per 100 jobs.

      • Automated Elite Jobs increase their upkeep by 12 Energy per 100 jobs.

  • Fallen Empire Buildings:

    • Are now Planet Limit 1 and automate 25% or 50% of relevant Specialist jobs or 75% or 100% of relevant Worker jobs. These are the only sources of Specialist automation in the new economic system.

      • Exceptions:

        • Dimensional Replicator now produces 10 of each Strategic Resource, Dimensional Fabricator now produces 25 of each Strategic Resource and 5 of each Rare Resource

        • Sky Dome / Empyrean Dome, Shrinkspace Depot / Extra-Dimensional Depot functionality remains the same.

    • Adjusted costs, upkeep, and build times of Fallen Empire buildings.

  • Fallen Empires now gain +100% Automated Workforce Efficiency

    • Awakened Empires gain an additional +500% Automated Workforce Efficiency

  • Polytechnic Mentors now grant Miners engineering research. The bonuses they grant have been reduced to +0.1.

• Ethics:

  • Authoritarian:

    • Worker Production bonus is now Worker Job Efficiency.

  • Egalitarian

    • Reduced the Faction Production bonus from Egalitarian ethics to +15% / +30%.

    • Specialist Production bonus is now Specialist Job Efficiency.

  • Pacifist

    • Reduced Empire Size from Pops bonus to -10%/-20%.

• The Corporate Authority now has +1 Envoy instead of +1 External Leader Pool.

• Player Crisis Balancing:

  • Adjusted Crisis Currency Gains across the board. Cosmogenesis and Behemoths should be a bit slower to progress than before. Nemesis will be slower to progress passively through vassal control, but faster through direct destruction.

  • Crisis Perks that give Economic Bonuses now also give slight upkeep increases where appropriate.

  • Cosmogenesis Difficulty Rework: Fallen Empires will now directly oppose your experiments, culminating in Total War at stage 5. If the Materialist empire is around, there will be several warnings as well as a safer, alternative path.

• Cybernetics changes:

  • Cybernetic Traits no longer have energy upkeep.

  • The Cybernetic and Limited Cybernetic traits now swap half of the base food (or equivalent) upkeep for energy upkeep.

  • Added two new positive Cyborg species traits for pop growth and bureaucrat output.

  • The Metabolic Reprocessing now also gives robot assembly from Augmentor jobs and organic assembly from Roboticist jobs.

  • The Integrated Anatomy no longer gives +1 organic species trait pick but instead +1 robot species trait point and +1 robot species trait pick.

  • Robot pops should no longer be penalized by reduction to non cyborg pop happiness.

  • Cyber Hives now receive temporary buffs (+3 skill level, +25% xp gain) to their Nodes as well as planets (+15% job productivity and -7.5% job upkeep) when assimilating new cyborgs into the collective. Devouring Swarms receive these bonuses upon purging pops instead.

  • Driven Assimilators now unlock additional effects on their cyborg traits for their ruler (-35% cyborg upkeep and +15% complex drone productivity) and governors (+20% replicator output).

  • Augmentors now produce 1.75 engineering research, up from 1.5, as well as 1.75 society research. The driven assimilator variant now provides 3 pop assembly, from 2. (The regular variant instead grants robot assembly, as mentioned above).

    • The society research output of genomic researchers and spawning drones (after completing genetic ascension) from 4.5 to 3.5 to bring them in line with this.

  • The Augmentation Bazaars building from the civic of the same name now counts as an Augmentation Center for the purposes of the Cybernetic ascension situation.

  • The Cybernetic species trait now provides an additional +5% Job Efficiency.

  • The Branching Out modifier from the Cyberization situation now gives +10% Trader Job Efficiency.

  • Hive minds which encounter genetic defects during cyberization can now choose a cyberisation policy.

  • Dry/Wet/Cold Climate mod traits for Cybernetic species are now habitability traits that allow reaching up to 125% Habitability.

• Biomorphosis changes:

  • Switched Optimized Neurology (Purity flex 1) and Heightened Attributes (Purity flex 2).

  • Switched Biochemical Composure/Regenerative Cloning (Cloning flex 2) and Artifical Population (Cloning flex 3).

  • Removed Organic Job Efficiency bonuses from Somatic Subversiveness (Mutation flex 2) and Artificial Population.

  • Optimized Neurology now gives -1 Leader Maximum Negative Traits instead of +1 Effective Leader Level

  • Somatic Subversiveness now grants an additional +1 Effective Leader Level.

  • Artificial Population now provides -10% Empire Size from Vat Grown pops

  • -10% Empire Size from Pops from Heightened Attributes moved to Imperfection Remediation.

• All non-Endbringer psionic corporate empires now unlock the Psionic Offices branch office building. The building has been reworked to now provide:

• 200 Empathic Marketer jobs. (Previously it added Telepath jobs if the host empire was psionic)

• Crime (if the branch office owner is a criminal syndicate).

• Only the Board of Psychics advanced authority gains +2% Aura Effectiveness.

• Base income of 5 unity (was 10 energy).

• +0.05 Trade from Traders to the planet (was +0.15 trade from Telepaths).

• Hidden modifier: Increases the chance the AI empires which host the building to take Psionic Ascension by +10% per building.

• Empathic Marketers are jobs that count as Traders for most purposes, but provide less Trade output in exchange for increasing the chance to draw psionic technologies. They also produce a small additional amount of unity if the host empire has undergone psionic ascension.

• Technocracy changes:

  • Technocracy now provides +1 Scientist Cap, but -1 Official Cap and explains that the additional starting Scientist is the governor of your homeworld.

  • Technocracy's council position no longer reduces Researcher upkeep, instead it provides cross-disciplinary research output to Researchers (with a corresponding increase in upkeep).

• Having a Zro deficit now grants:

  • -75% Psionic Pop Job Efficiency

  • +50% Shroud Delve Cost or Cooldown (depending on if you have Utopia or Shadows of the Shroud)

  • -50% Psionic Weapons damage

  • A 2% chance each month to suffer a Shroud Incursion. If you suffer a Shroud Incursion, another one cannot spawn for two years.

• Shroud-Forged now register as psionic pops for the has_psionic_species_trait check.

• Imperial Legion armies are no longer limited

• Tankbound:

  • The -25% upkeep from Tankbound civics now applies to Automated Workforce instead of all jobs.

  • Infernal Tankbounds now begin with three additional Generator districts. Other Tankbound empires will now convert one less Farm into a Generator.

  • Removed the 30% automated workforce penalty that Tankbound started with. They no longer begin with insights on Assembly Patterns as it is no longer needed to negate this penalty. Assembly Patterns and Construction Templates now give Tankbound +10% Automation Efficiency.

  • Tankbound Production Overseers now generate 2 Engineering Research instead of Unity, and grant +2% efficiency and +200 Amenities. They are only granted by Urban districts (or as Clerk swaps).

• Habitats:

  • Habitat dwellers can now build rare crystal extraction specializations in their mining districts and both exotic gas and volatile mote extraction specializations in reactor districts.

  • Habitat capital buildings now provide hunter seeker drones for both machine intelligences and hive minds. They no longer provide logistics drones for machine intelligences.

• Reworked Oppressive Autocracy to swap Enforcers (and Telepaths) into the Elite strata instead of granting them a special exception as Specialists.

• The Specialist Training tradition now grants +2% Specialist Job Efficiency per Planetary Governor level.

• Rebalanced several of the Luminary leader traits.

  • Pious Ascetic now scales from +0.1 to +0.3 Society research from bureaucrats (was +0.5 to +2)

  • High King now scales from +10% to +30% Job Efficiency for Elites (was Resources from Jobs)

  • Enlightened Ruler now scales from -2.5% to -10% Job Upkeep (was -5% to -20%)

• Adjusted many Planetary Automation scripts.

  • Known Issue: We are aware that Planetary Automation is not building enough Districts.

• Specimens:

  • Specimens that grant Stability now grant +1 Stability per rarity level.

  • Increased the rarity level of the Spirit of the Unshackled specimen to Exceptional. 

  • The Manifesti Social Commentary Piece specimen now increases Faction Output. (Reduces Deviancy by a small amount for Gestalts.)

• Adjusted the amount of utility slots on the Deep Space Citadel, from 8 per tier to 6 per tier.

• The unifier leader trait now provides +15% unity output instead of 25%. Also fixed its tooltip.

• Synthetic Fertility:

  • Synthetic Fertility no longer starts with Administrative AI, Self-Aware Logic and Sapient AI technologies researched. Instead, they receive Administrative AI with some progress at game start, and each of these tech now increases the output of the Identity repository. 

  • To make up for this the base output of the repository has been reduced, but the total output with all technologies researched will be slightly higher than before. 

  • The origin now also comes with +15% Computing research speed and increased draw chance for the aforementioned technologies. 

  • The rate at which pops die out has been halved (from 30/month to 15/month).

  • Synthetic Fertility now starts with Powered Exoskeletons

• Redesigned Mutagenic Spas to be less exploitable and to better match the theme of the civics::

  • Mutagenic Spas no longer scale with the number of districts and provide pop growth or assembly.

  • The civic now grants the governor of a planet with a Mutagenis Spa the Substance Abuser trait.

  • The building now provides -10% to both the Habitability Ceiling and Floor of the planet they are constructed on, provide 200 jobs and +3 effective leader level for the governor of the planet, if they are a substance abuser.

  • The jobs increase the job efficiency of ruler strata (or equivalent) and provide amenities.

  • Rogue Servitors gain a special variant of Mutagenic Spas for their Bio-Trophies instead of the normal Machine Lubrication Basins.

  • Non-corporate Spa Attendants now produce 500 Amenities (was 100). Corporate Spa Attendants now provide 2 trade. Spa Attendants for Worker Coop buff the Union Stewards.

  • Mutagenic Spa Councilors now increase the number of spa attendant jobs, this effect is amplified if they are a substance abuser.

  • Mutagenic Spas can now be placed in research or unity district specializations

• Increased the bonuses from Food Processing, Mineral Purification, and Energy Grid buildings.

• Experimental Sentencing changes:

  • Experimentation Chambers now provide a static number of experiment engineer jobs, and a scaling number of test subject jobs (depending on building tier). The number of test subject jobs is increased by 50% on Penal Colonies.

  • Rebalanced the amount of research experiment engineers produce per crime on the planet. The bug in which the modifiers considered the uncapped crime on the colony has also been fixed.

  • Consumer goods upkeep of experiment engineers now also increases with crime.

  • Orderlies no longer reduce housing requirements on the planet.

  • Orderlies now increase the job efficiency of experiment engineers and test subjects not their output.

• Halved the effects on workers and slaves of the Ruthless Developer trait.

• Unifier trait effects no longer scale with leader level.

• Reduced happiness from Social Welfare.

• Reduced unity from civilians under Social Welfare.

• Starbase buildings:

  • Starbase building Offworld Trading Company now grants +4 trade per Trade Hub module (was +2 Trade).

  • Starbase building Hyperlane Registrar now grants +2 Trade per Trade Hub module (was a non-scaling +2 Trade) and adds the Subspace Amplifier aura to the Starbase (-40% Hyperlane and Jump Drive cooldown/change time).

• Adopting partial virtuality by undergoing Synthetic ascension as an organic, lithoid or infernal species no longer grants -90% housing.

• The Computation Core Focus policies now grant +2.5% job efficiency per 100 roboticists or identity designers instead of +0.5% per 100 civilians.

• Adjusted scaling of event spawned pirate fleets to be more reasonable for 4.3 numbers.

• Mercenary and Mindwarden Enclaves now require 100 Naval Capacity in the fleet.

• The Crisis Beacon espionage operation now looks for larger fleets than before.

• Reduced Capital Productivity techs to +5% efficiency per tier from +10% per tier.

• Adjusted ship sizes for Cosmogenesis bioships and hive FE bioships

• Distribute Living Metal decision now costs 250 Living Metal (was 700), but grants +10% Infrastructure Build Speed and -10% Infrastructure Cost and Upkeep for 5 years (was +10% Infrastructure Build Speed and -20% Job Upkeep for 5 years).

• Decreased the research (and upkeep) on rural jobs provided Natural Neural Network

• Aptitude Tradition Changes:

  • Aptitude Adoption effects are unchanged. (+1 Leader Trait option, Leadership Conditioning Agenda) 

    • Leadership Conditioning agenda now grants 5% Leader XP when started, and 20% upon completion. (Was 10% / 10%.)

  • The Empire Needs You: Now -25% Leader Cost and +1 Recruitable Leaders per Class

  • Psychological Profiling: Now Leader Maximum Negative Traits -1 and +1 Leader Capacity for each class.

  • Healthcare Program: Now +10% Leader Lifespan and -25% Leader Upkeep. 

  • Specialist Training: Now +10% Specialist (or Complex Drone) Job Efficiency. 

  • Champions of the Empire: Now +1 Effective Leader Skill Level. 

  • Aptitude Finisher is now +1 Leader Starting Traits. (Previously part of Champions of the Empire.) 

• The Appropriation tradition now also grants +25% Auto Resettlement Chance. (And has an appropriate flavor swap for Egalitarians)

• Trickle Up Economics now increases trade from living standards.

• Slaves in the Slave Market now cost Trade rather than Energy.

• Cybernetic Creed:

  • Cybernetic Creeds can now be Egalitarian.

  • Cybernetic Creed Spiritualist Factions no longer care about robots.

  • Augmentations of the Fellowship now gives +10% Job Eff to Metallurgists, Artisans and Bureaucrats.

  • Augmentations of the Templars now gives +10% Job Eff to Soldiers and Bureaucrats, and +10% to both Army Damage and Health.

  • Augmentations of the Choir now gives +10% Job Eff to Researchers and Bureaucrats.

  • Augmentations of the Commune now gives +10% Job Eff to Workers and Bureaucrats.

  • Ritualistic Implants now gives +5% Job Eff to Metallurgists, Engineers, Bureaucrats, Soldiers and Workers, and +5% Army Damage.

  • Cybernetic Creed traits are no longer locked to Spiritualist ethics.

  • When combined with Media Conglomerate, the United Creeds will continue to produce Unity instead of Trade.

  • Cybernetic Creed Factions now also produces either Minerals, Alloys, Consumer Goods or Engineering Research. The unified Creeds produce additional Unity.

  • Cybernetic Creed Advanced authorities now have differentiated modifiers.

• Mindwardens:

  • Rejecting Psionic Heresy allows Mindwardens access to the Shroud Inoculation living standard.

• Distinguished Admiralty now grants +20% Command Limit instead of a flat amount.

• Increased Naval Cap Repeatable tech to 20.

• Crisis Updates:

  • Adjusted End Game Crisis power relative to difficulty setting.

  • Tuned crisis strength scaling when allowing All end game crisis to spawn.

  • Reduced chances of Cetana spawning while another crisis is active.

  • The initial Unbidden fleet is now stronger to help them survive unfortunate spawn choices.

• Aristocratic Elite now also grants +10% Elite Job Efficiency and +10% Leader Upkeep.

• Police State now also grants +10% Enforcer Job Efficiency. 

  • The Chief of Secret Police council position changed from 5% Governing Ethics Attraction per level to 2% Governing Ethics Attraction and 1% Enforcer Job Efficiency per level.

• Lithoid Empires start with one more Mining district

• Martial Law (setting a Commander as the Governor of a planet or sector) now also directly increases Stability on any planet they're controlling - not just if it's their home planet.

• Changed the scaling of Imperious Architecture

• Increased the maximum damage scaling for weapons that increase damage based on target ship size.

• Reduced the effect that Councilor skill levels has on Agenda speed.

• Loyalty Circuits has been replaced by Compliance Filters as an auto-modding trait. This means that Augmentation Bazaars can pick it on game start as well.

• The augmentation center now provided 400 jobs for Driven Assimilators

• Augmentor jobs for regular empires now provide flat bonus pop growth, not a multiplier to existing pop growth.

• Significantly changed the Eater of Worlds Covenant Powers and Auras

  • The Doom power for the Eater of Worlds no longer immediately starts a war.

  • The Aura Intensification of the Eater of Worlds no longer summons ships from nothing.

  • The Aura Intensification of the Eater of Worlds now increments your Doom Intensity.

  • The Doom power now manifests the Doom of the Eater fleet.

  • Between 3 and 6 Intensity, this fleet only has Teeth (escorts).

  • Between 6 and 12 Intensity, this fleet has Teeth (escorts) and Fangs (cruisers).

  • At 12 or higher Intensity, this fleet has Teeth (escorts), Fangs (cruisers) and Tusks (Battleships).

  • Intensity is capped at 50.

  • The number of ships depends on Doom Intensity.

  • Manifesting a new fleet will instantly dismiss any current fleet.

  • The fleet will appear in orbit of any planet with a Sanctum of the Eater (or if one doesn't exist, your capital).

• Voidworms will be less likely to attack a planet with fewer than 1000 pops.

• Necrophage Origin:

  • Necrophage Chambers of Elevation now block pop growth for necrophage species.

  • Necrophyte Apprentice jobs now boost the pop growth of non-necrophage species on the same planet by a small amount.

  • These changes mean that the pop growth weirdness of the origin should be gone and planets with Necrophyte Apprentices should retain a high rate of growth of the secondary species, with the once per decade rituals mass converting pops to the primary species.

  • When playing a hive-minded necrophage, the force spawned pre-ftl empires are no longer hive-minded.

• Entropy Drinkers civics

  • Replaced the scaling empire-wide energy credit production from Entropy Drinkers civics with "Energy Credits per 100 Psionic Pops: +0.5"

  • Entropy Drinkers councilors now give +0.3% Leader XP per level.

  • Taking any non-Psionic ascension path now blocks you from reforming into Entropy Drinkers, since starting with the civic locks you into psionic ascension.

• Chosen civics now give +10% Unity at 1,000 attunement points (was 50%)

• Modifiers for rural jobs from Storm Relief Centers have been halved.

• Scrapping robots during an alloy deficit now gives 1 alloy per pop instead of 100 alloys per pop.

• Regular empires can no longer psionically awaken robots.

• A mysterious ghost district no longer sometimes appears in the UI for the Synaptic Lathe.

• The Interloper in pre-ftl Shattered Ring systems can now be removed.

• Fixed resettlement costs being inconsistent.

• Some slaves no longer benefit from job efficiency bonuses twice.

• Fixed the tooltips for Battle Thrall slavery and Military Service to clarify that slaves need to be Battle Thralls to be soldiers.

• The rampaging trees no longer continue to kill everyone after they have in fact been defeated.

• "Scorched World Heralds" cannot longer grant Full Citizenship or Residence status to conquered non-Thermophile pops

• Reduced the number of Utility slots on Starbases and Deep Space Citadels.

• Deep Space Citadels now have the Hull and Armor matching normal Starholds, Star Fortresses, and Citadels, plus innate shields equal to their armor.

• Ground Combat Changes:

  • Generally reduced the Army Count and effects that grant extra Defensive Armies.

  • Many weapon and defensive technologies now also improve army health or damage. Subdermal Stimulation increases Army Morale.

  • Powered Exoskeletons now grants a higher bonus to Army Damage. Replaced Worker Production bonus with a larger bonus to Worker and Simple Drone Job Efficiency.

  • Integrated Cybernetics now also grants bonuses to Army Damage and Health.

  • Psionic Theory now also grants a reduction to Army Morale Damage Taken.

• Slightly increased Orbital Bombardment Damage.

• Removed Gestation Worlds. Instead Cybernetic traditions now grant access to Augmentation Centers for Driven Assimilators, providing Augmentor Drones. These jobs provide Amenities and Organic Pop Growth for Cyborgs.

• Branch Offices now cost trade to establish instead of energy.

• Imperious Architecture/Synaptic Extensions now grants additional housing and jobs to capital buildings, scaling with the tier of the capital.

• Volcanic Worlds are now less common than other habitable planet classes.

• Replaced the increased naval capacity for artificial ships for Beastmaster empires with increased cost and upkeep.

• Reduced the power of Pirate Fleets

• Driven Assimilators now start with 2,000 cyborg pops instead of 1,000. However, they start with 1,000 fewer machine pops.

• The Animator of Clay's interaction that spawns pops for Shroud-Forged Empires now only spawns pops on planets with a Shroud-Touched Region or a Zroni Equilibrator. The cost has also been changed from a flat 500 Zro to 250 Zro per colony targeted.

• Eternal Vigilance once again no longer creates free defense platforms. Added +20% home territory ship fire rate.

  • Rationale: In the current environment, the free defense platforms were too strong. The AP also created an undesirable trap for players that were not ready for the economic impact the upkeep of a huge number of defense platforms would create.

• Reduced the scaling on Primal Calling stance modifiers by a factor of 5 to match the increase in vivarium capacity.

• The Integrated Weaponry, Delicate Frames, Juiced Power, Hollow Bones and Cyber Commando traits now affect job efficiency for Solder jobs.

• Fortune Tellers no longer produce extra trade.

• The Machine Intelligence Ruler now grants -1% Empire Size from Pops and +500 Amenities on each Colony per Level. (Was -3% Empire Size from Pops per Level)

• Buffed Museum Curators slightly. Also added the Historic Reenactor job swap when combined with Warrior Culture.

• The energy cost and upkeep of private colony ships has been replaced with trade.

• Nerfed Replication Hub and Spawning Nest district specializations

• Additional balance pass on origins (separate feature branch from other balancing):

  • The Survivor Species trait (from the Post-Apocalyptic Origin) now also grants a reduction to housing and amenities usage.

  • The Colonial Spirit modifier (from the Lost Colony Origin) now also grants 10% pop growth (pop assembly as appropriate)

  • The Storm Chaser origin can no longer build storm shelters, but will instead benefit from their effects through their capital buildings as soon as they research the related technologies.

  • Storm Chasers now also get -15% devastations from storms and -10% ship damage in storms

  • Storm Shelters are now slightly more effective, negating 30/45% of economic penalties instead of 25/40%

  • Storm negation technology now reduces negative effects on ships by 45% per tier instead of 50% (thus capping at 90% protection in most cases)

  • Slingshot to the Stars now also provides -15% cost reduction for outposts (This does not apply to Influence costs)

• Bureaucrat jobs (and equivalents) now produce slightly more unity.

• Rebalanced Thermotechnic Mentors:

  • They no longer add additional output to other jobs anymore, but produce their own instead. This output scales with the amount of employed jobs per 100 pops, being capped at 4000 jobs per category.

  • They no longer count as "Bureaucrats" anymore, but are their own job category now (important for job modifiers).

  • Council position "Thermal Engineer" now reduces the upkeep of "Thermotechnic Mentors" by 2%

• Obsessional Directive now grants +15% Artisan Drone Job Efficiency, and increased Consumer Goods storage. The Commodities Consolidation situation now grants Artisan Drone Job Efficiency and adds Unity production to Artisans (instead of all Unity).

• The Subterranean Contact Zone now provides job swaps for traders or logistic drones.

• Removed inappropriate researcher jobs from planetary features which provided them.

• Readjusted bonuses from Genesis Guides civics

  • Halved the modifiers from the Genesis Preserves

  • Added an on action to remove the Preserves if you reform your government

  • Reduced rewards from colonising from 500 Unity and 25 Influence to 250 Unity and 5 Influence

  • Reduced rewards from uplifting from 1000 unity to 250 Unity and 5 Influence

  • Ensured that a Genesis Preserve is created only if one does not already exist.

  • Unity from Jobs modifier from the Genesis Monument is decreased to 10% if you don't have the civic

  • Updated various checks to check for all variants of the civic instead of just the version for regular individualist empires

  • Set the strata for newly spawned pre-sapients to actually be pre-sapient instead of No Category

• The Nano-Corpses deposit now yields alloys, not rare crystals.

• The Mountain in the Sky deposit from the Gravity Storm has been rebalanced, but allows construction of a unique district specialization.

• The Aquaculture district specialization now provides 50 jobs of each type, not 75.

• Anglers no longer produce additional food.

• Anglers and Pearl Divers are now swapped on wet worlds, regardless of district specializations.

• Factions have 50% reduced output during the first ten years of the game (when factions normally do not exist).

• Parliamentary System now grants +20% Faction Output but has +50% disapproval for unmet demands.

• Media Conglomerate now gives early access to factions, but replaces faction unity output with trade output.

• Civics that provide politician job swaps (Technocracy, Merchant Guilds, Exalted Priesthood) now provide additional jobs to relevant buildings.

• Overtuned origin no longer has early access to genetic ascension.

• The bonus pop growth and amenities provided by Genomic Researcher jobs from selecting Cloning traditions and choices during Biomorphosis have been moved to the Genomic Research Facility building. The amount of amenities granted has been increased to 500.

• Rebalanced all council positions that gave flat resources to jobs.

• Dark Consortium Civic now has a beefier Dark Matter Deposit on game start.

• Pass on Edicts. Many now affect Efficiency.

• Knights are now considered Soldiers instead of Bureaucrats and Researchers.

• Strong, Very Strong, and Weak traits now also affect Soldier efficiency.

• Adjusted effects of Commander and Scientist governors.

• Battle Thralls now get a bonus to Soldier efficiency.

• Disruptors now start with 50% shield and armor bypass at tier 1 which increases to 80% at Psionic Disruptors. They now also deal +25% damage against shields.

• Increased Unity production and Consumer Goods upkeep of Politicians.

• Commander Starting Level civics: Swapped Commander XP Gain for Commander Upkeep Reduction on Distinguished Admiralty. Added Commander Upkeep Reduction to Warbots and Strength of Legions.

• Machine Capital Buildings (tier 2 or higher) now also add Coordinator jobs.

• Reduced the power of the council positions for Chosen civics.

• Clustered Capacity (Virtuality) now gives +75% Virtual Pop Job Eff and -10% per Colony. (Was +175%, -25% per Colony)

• Rebalanced many species traits

  • Erudite

    • +30% Researcher job efficiency -> +20% Researcher job efficiency

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Fertile:

    • +30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Vat Grown:

    • +33% Organic Pop Assembly -> +25% Organic Pop Assembly

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Existential Iteroparity

    • +30% Pop Growth Speed -> +20% Pop Growth Speed

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Numistic Administration:

    • +33% Trader job efficiency -> +25% Trader job efficiency

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Dark Matter Engines

    • +40% job efficiency -> +20% job efficiency

      • Rationale: Number too big

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Dark Matter -> 0.03 Dark Matter

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more

  • Living Metal Augmentations

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Living Metal -> 0.03 Living Metal

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more

  • Biomimetic Assembly:

    • +50% Replicator job efficiency -> +20% Replicator job efficiency

      • Rationale: Number too big

  • Matrix Trading

    • +50% Trade job efficiency -> +20% Trade job efficiency

      • Rationale: Number too big

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Rare Crystals -> 0.02 Rare Crystals

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more

  • Mote-Powered Tools

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.01 Volatile Motes -> 0.02 Volatile Motes

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more

  • Exotic Fuel Consumption

    • +10% job efficiency -> +10% Specialist & Complex Drone job efficiency

      • Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the next trait

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.04 Exotic Gases -> 0.05 Exotic Gases

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more

  • Volatile Mote Reactor

    • +30% Habitability -> +10% Worker & Menial Drone job efficiency

      • Rationale: General nerf and harmonisation with the previous trait

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Volatile Motes -> 0.05 Volatile Motes

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous trait

  • Rare Crystal Exterior

    • +20% Metallurgist job efficiency -> +30% Habitability

      • Rationale: Flavour text makes this more appropriate for habitability

    • Upkeep per 100 Pops: 0.02 Rare Crystals -> 0.05 Rare Crystals

      • Rationale: Makes the cost matter more and harmonisation with the previous traits

• The Arcology Project and districts on Ecumenopoleis now cost alloys instead of minerals

• Dictatorial Cybervision now grants a flat Cyborg job efficiency bonus and scaling Stability for Enforcers.

• Physiological Transcendency now gives +2 Unity per 100 Politician jobs instead of +3 Unity per 100 Elite pops.

• Dictatorial Cybervision and Homogenous Submission now give Governing Ethics Attraction instead of Authoritarian ethics attraction.

• Fixed Master Teachings: War having only militarist options

• Fixed an issue in the Pleasure Seekers civic tooltip

• Fixed Zroni Equilibrators from giving biologist jobs a society research upkeep instead of society research production

• Increasing randomness in the empire generation on new game.

• Fauna don't lose their mutations when growing anymore

• Ship Designs don't regain "auto upgrade" on loading

• Housing from Mining district modifiers now works correctly on Volcanic, Machine and Hive Worlds

• Fixed some Purity traditions having the wrong effects for Wilderness.

• Fixed Biomorphosis situation showing Cloning and Mutation approaches for Wilderness

• Fixed empty tooltip for Purity Approach for Biomorphosis situation for Wilderness

• The Catastrophic Damage on a ringworld from a pre-FTL civilization with the Shattered Ring origin can now be repaired correctly.

• Fixed psionic job efficiency bonuses from Psi-Corps/Telepaths not applying correctly.

• Fixed the council position for Oppressive Autocracy to correctly provide job efficiency bonuses for enforcers

• Fixed Oppressive Autocracy enforcers not promoting strata correctly.

• Fixed ship automation button flickering

• Fixed some issues with the tooltips of the Psi-Corps.

• Fixed Test Subjects not having a job upkeep while Test Subject Drones do.

• Fixed Experiment Engineer Drones not having the scaling upkeep that was granted to Experiment Engineers.

• Chor's Compass events can now no longer occur if the target planet already has the effects of the event in progress. Additionally, each empire can now only experience a Megacorpse concept once per decade.

• Fixed a number of specialist, worker and other jobs that still provided amenities for Oppressive Autocracy when they shouldn't've.

• Fixed Gospel of the Masses not increasing the trade value produced by Spiritualist pops on colonies where there are branch offices.

• Fixed Cetana not granting the Modern Cincinnatus achievement

• Fixed erroneous tooltip for the Social Welfare living standard.

• Limited "Contact Report" events to one per playthrough.

• Fixed inverted trigger logic for Crisis Spawning with All Crisis active

• Ruler Resource Output modifiers from Oligarchic Overclocking were inappropriately clamped. Reworked the calculations so the bonus is correctly capped at +20% and updated the Authority tooltip.

• Nonfunctional Resources from Jobs modifier from Adaptive Shareholder Schemes replaced with Job Efficiency and now works.

• Fixed a couple of incorrect string calls in the Biomorphosis situation.

• Expansion planner now updates from correct planet without any need for manually resorting

• Planet Automation should work again. A design pass is in progress to improve the scripts.

• Fixed founder species has happiness check being reversed applying wrong amenities buffs on planetary populations

• Fixed the flavor text of a number of council position displaying the default name instead of the renamed title if the player had renamed them.

• Fixed Subterranean origin not giving extra housing on mining districts.

• Fixed nobles from cyber imperials not giving stability.

• Wenkwort planet modifiers are now correctly removed if the planet stops being a gaia world.

• Fixed a number of technologies having incorrect amounts for the housing modifiers they provide.

• Updated the Gestalt version of Chosen of the Eater to match the changes made to the non-gestalt version.

• Fixed mutation and cloning ascension not being able to remove advanced traits.

• Fixed modifiers from the Prospectorium Optimizer trait.

• Fixes an issue with ship size map icons.

• Corrected erroneous tooltip for the Domination tradition finisher.

• Corporate Vampires and Entropy Drinkers can now be swapped seamlessly when transitioning between corporate and oligarchic .governments

• Fixed several issues with secondary district names for Spiritualist empires and Ring World districts.

• Added abort triggers for the Prethoryn, Unbidden and Contingency event chain so they get properly cleaned up after their related crisis is defeated.

• Endbringers can no longer be declared a crisis if they are already the current crisis, which was restarting their war.

• Fixed incorrect founder species have happiness calculation resulting in inverted behavior that caused for example hive minds getting happiness bonuses.

• Fixed sector governor missing propagation of non triggered trait modifiers to all planets in the sector and not only the capital.

• Adjusted various conditions in modifier tooltip generation to not show unintentional data, ex “planet:”

• Fixed ship/fleet special modifiers being applied properly to the simulation and not only show up in tooltip ex docked ship upkeep reduction.

• Specialist Subject Relay Network effects now correctly only stack once for each type of subject like all other Specialist Perk benefits.

• Automated Job upkeep now appears correctly as "Automated Jobs" instead of showing up as "Other" or nothing at all in tooltips.

• Bio Shield techs now correctly inherit the Army Health modifiers from regular shield techs.

• Tankbound no longer get extra Production Overseers from volcanic generator or mining districts.

• Fixed lithoid and infernal Void Dwellers sometimes trying to create a mining station on their starting habitat.

• Fixed an issue with the Lesser Messenger ship name not being displayed when transferring it to another fleet.

• Fixed the tooltip of refinery worlds not properly displaying the gas refiner jobs.

• Fixed another issue in the Bloomed species trait tooltip.

• Fixed cases of Primal Calling starting the game with the wrong version of their unique building.

• Augmentor research output is now consistently split into society and engineering even before finishing the cybernetic ascension.

• Fixed calculation of mercenary enclaves

• Fixed required components selection in ship designer when using custom role

• Adjustments made to ship behaviors to make them less likely to behave in terrible ways.

  • Ships that base their desired range on weapon range (most of them) will now try to get to 90% of their max range instead of sitting precisely at their max range and hoping nothing goes wrong. (Exposed as COMBAT_DESIRED_RANGE_MULT define.)

  • Artillery combat computers now once again try to stay at max range instead of median.

  • Ships that are getting blasted from out of their range will now charge their attacker if they're within 200% of their desired max range instead of 110%. (This is now exposed in defines as COMBAT_CHARGE_DISTANCE_COEFFICIENT.)

• Fleets of a single ship that exceed your Command Limit will no longer try to split themselves into two new fleets every single day.

• Fixed a bug with command_limit_mult in which the modifier was applied to itself before being applied to the command limit.

• Pops that are either not enslaved or are mindless robots will no longer demand to be Battle Thralls to be allowed Limited military service. (Tankbound Necrophages should now be able to set their policies to permit their mindless robots to be robot armies.)

• Exotic Gas Capture district specialization no longer costs twice as much as other specializations.

• Spiritualist and Materialist empires will now attempt to place their starting Temple or Research Lab in the Archives district specialization.

• The FE building received notification now displays which building has been unlocked.

• The tooltip for the Clustered Capacity tradition has been adjusted to reflect the new values.

• The Opportunist 3 leader trait now functions as intended.

• Fixed an issue where reforming government and invalidating genesis guides would not remove genesis preserves from colonies.

• Corrected the Bloomed Species trait tooltip to properly refer to job efficiency instead of resources from jobs.

• Adjusted the Polish names for the Imperial Fiefdom AI vassals.

• Fixed a missing title in the demands of the supremacist faction for Hard Reset.

• The Materialist FE warning when going cosmogenesis is now only issued if there is actually a materialist FE in the galaxy.

• Fixed a case where players could build several Primal Calling unique buildings on a single planet.

• Fixed an issue where cosmic storms would spam the error log with nonsensical messages.

• The Subterranean origin tooltip now mentions the existence of the Subterranean Urbanization zone.

• The tooltip for Existential Iteroparity has been adjusted to match the in game value.

• Wilderness species should no longer be able to receive forbidden traits from FE interactions.

• The Deluge colossus now properly terraforms its targets, creating appropriate deposits.

• Angler's bonus food output has now actually been removed as announced in previous patch notes (they now produce as much as regular farmers, but retain their trade production)

• Tutorial settings can be adjusted again.

• Fixes an issue where civics that affect the base level of leaders don’t work

• Tidied up some Cybernetics related tooltips.

• Remove flickering from buildable area for Deep Space Citadel.

• Fire Oracles now only appear if the main species of an empire has habitability \\<= 50% (before it was any local species)

• Wilderness empires now pay Biomass when terraforming a Volcanic World into a normal habitable planet

• Fixed command_limit_mult acting like command_limit_add.

• Fixed some scoping issues with the random events if you neighbour the caravaneers

• The Luminary for Under One Rule will now have the correct number of traits for their level

• Fixed the Galactic Crucible not triggering a notification / event choice after capture in certain situations (after the war)

• The "Scion" origin now blocks the "Scorched World Heralds" civic

• Modifiers from starbase targeting owner country now makes the country recalculate as it should

• Prevent nascent stage purifiers from purging their own children

• The Anomalous Cube dig site will now be properly hidden until it can be properly explored.

• Servile species no longer generate leaders.

• Gestalt Empires will no longer gain the "Form a Mercenary Enclave" focus.

• Genocidal Empires will no longer gain the "Enclave Research Support" focus.

• Fixed the incorrect trigger used for collateral damage

• Fixed a large number of ship components that did not have their modifiers applied correctly.

• Fixed some old triggers that were checking for pre-4.0 pop assembly. This should improve AI handling of building Clone Vats and Robot Assembly Plants.

• Ground Combat Collateral Damage will no longer kill the last 300 pops on a planet. (Instead of the last 3.)

• Added missing name list for the Mindwarden species. They can now be insulted properly.

• Fix upgrading Hunting Expanse to Hunting Nexus.

• Changing the design of Deep Space Citadels now works correctly, persisting in save games.

• The GDF/Imperial Armada now correctly shows their naval capacity in the GalCom UI.

• The Independent GDF no longer grows infinitely.

• Fix techs showing Experimentation Chambers unlocks even without Twisted Experiments civic

• The Generator Ring World designation is now available to non gestalt empires

• The Enhanced Memory and Learning Algorithms cyborg species traits and their negative versions have been differentiated. Learning Algorithms now grants +25% leader xp gain and +1 councilor skill.

• The Infinity Sphere leviathan species trait now grants +25% researcher job efficiency instead of the deprecated -50% researcher job upkeep.

• The "Population trials" option from the Synthetic Transformation situation now properly grants the biggest resource deposit.

• Fixed several civics preventing Megacorp government reform.

• The tooltip for the Hive World AP no longer lists removed modifiers.

• Fixed several cases of Corporate civics being removed upon becoming galactic emperor.

• The Elevated Synapses Overtuned trait now properly doubles it's leader XP bonus when "Damn the consequences" is activated

• Lost Colony Hiveminds now also get the +10% habitability granted by the non hive version of the origin.

• Machine Leaders should no longer get the Synthetic trait after any species modification. It should now only occur after the relevant traditions have been unlocked.

• The unique planet modifier from Payback now gets properly removed if their capital is conquered before it expires.

• Thrall Worlds now properly swap out soldier jobs from districts and buildings into battle thralls

• The vivarium effects from Primal Calling have now been properly scaled to account for the vivarium size increase

• Fixed and unlocalized string in the Rainbow Ice Sheet event.

• Fixed a missing loc string in the Flaming Tornadoes event.

• The gene mentorship description now properly displays 30% leader experience gain

• Psychological Infertility is now properly compatible with Lithoid species

• Slightly increased the odds of caravaneer proximity events happening

• Fixed the amount of amenities that Identity Designers were providing.

• Overtuned is now correctly blocked from early genetic ascension.

• Knights now inherit economic modifiers from soldier jobs

• Knights no longer inherit economic modifiers from researcher and bureaucrat jobs.

• Soldier jobs are now considered specialist jobs for economic modifiers.

• The additional unity production from Death Priests following a sacrifice has been reduced.

• Fixed Duelists double dipping on their council position.

• Fixed the construction entity of the "Galactic Crucible" using the wrong rotation.

• Fixed "Planet Forgers" civics giving access to additional habitable worlds for origins that shouldn't get them (example Shattered Ring)

• Dictatorial Cybervision now ACTUALLY grants a flat Cyborg job efficiency bonus and scaling Stability for Enforcers.

• Fixed the max district tooltips always showing modifiers that grant additional districts to non-artificial worlds, even if you were viewing a habitat.

• Fixed the max district tooltips not showing percentage modifiers to max districts.

• Improved how habitat max districts are calculated.

• Planetscapers now gain the technologies to remove blockers on Volcanic Worlds

• Ringworlds now block the construction of a Galactic Crucible

• Ranger jobs now receive the correct amount of resources from Volcanic World blockers

• Pre-ftl researchers and bureaucrats are now far less efficient

• add_skill_without_trait_selection now correctly only levels up without adding traits. (This fixes issues with the initial traits for rulers of empires with the Under One Rule origin).

• Updated Shroud and Mutation weapons to take into account changes in size_damage_factor

• Rehooked launch argument -threads=XX to set thread pool size

• Removed remaining references to pre-4.0 strategic resource harvesting jobs that were converted into job swaps.

• Automigration now limits pops that work uncapped jobs to require available jobs of higher rank on target planet. (Robot migration issue from the Beta)

• AI empires will now prefer to have three or fewer underdeveloped colonies before colonizing the next one. (Underdeveloped is defined as having under 1000 pops.)

• Significant improvement to calculations made when bypasses are updated. (mean: ~150 µs -> ~5 µs!)

• Reduced number of memory allocations

• Optimized string allocations

• More string optimizations

• Reduced repeated localization lookups when calculating planet modifiers

• Moved modifier name calculations to tooltip generation where this was done in the game simulation.

• Micro optimized localization system even more, reducing amount of allocations, recursions and length calculations.

• Optimized resource lists in the Planet UI.

• Secured the execution around planet events to be evaluated in a place that is more OOS safe.

• Moved more trigger executions from Planet modifier calculation to daily pulse.

• Removed an unnecessary update of triggered modifiers on planets.

• Fixed crash in planet view economy tab when expanding jobs

• Fixed a rare faction and focus cards OOS on hotjoin

• Fixed an issue where randomized heights of coordinates could trigger an OOS.

• Reduced likelihood of a massive OOS at the start of the game.

• Reduced stack usage in combat targeting code that could cause a CTD/undefined behaviour when larger numbers of ships are involved in combat.

• More string optimizations

• Rebuilt libPDXSDK.so for Linux to make it compatible within the steam runtime environment as well as directly run in a Ubuntu 20 compatible distribution

• Significantly reduced the lag spike when creating the Solarpunk country

• Optimization of functions related to strings

• Optimized memory allocations in Alert Manager

• Improved fleet icon logic

• Added economic threading changes:

  • New dependency tracking should reduce the cpu wait time when updating and reducing the “monthly stutter”

  • Decreased sizes of threaded batches for objects that are many and becomes uneven in cpu need for better distribution over multiple cores

• Added modifier threading changes:

  • Mainly for reusing memory and reduce time spent on allocations/deallocations in the update

  • Decreased sizes of threaded batches for objects that are many and becomes uneven in cpu need for better distribution over multiple cores (yeah here as well)

• Major rework of modifier calculations for Planets, PopGroups, Armies, Leaders, Ships and Fleets

  • Moving trigger dependent calculations out to suitable pulses instead (Micro, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly)

  • Number of trigger evaluations optimized

• Removed some redundant modifier updates from Armies and from Pops

• Optimized allocations when counting species

• Moved script calculations out of modifier calculations for better performance

• Moved some trigger evaluations out of modifier calculations for better performance

• Fixed a bug that was disabling threading of the economic system introduced in earlier open beta. This should be especially noticeable (or rather, should no longer be noticeable) on the monthly calculations, which should be more seamless now.

• Fixing performance regression in language localization system.

• Addressed some stack overflows on macos

• Optimized event parameter storage. Effects of this include:

  • Reduces heap allocations for 95% of EventScope uses.

  • AddOrUpdateScopeParameter now 71x faster. Improved consistency and eliminated performance spikes.

  • CreateEventScope now 48x faster. Performance variability eliminated.

  • AddScopeParameter 83x faster. Highly consistent.

  • GetScopeParameter 35% faster - median time reduced by 84%; meaningful improvement on a less frequent code path.

  • Ship CalculateModifier 68% faster.

  • Army CalculateModifier 5.3% faster.

  • Uninhabited Planet DailyUpdate 3-5% faster.

Summary: Changes result in smoother gameplay, reduced load on memory allocator, frame processing time reduced by ~10%.

• Improved Scripted Trigger caching

• Optimize string allocation 76% faster

• The render cycle is optimized to perform as if V-Sync were off, but without screen tearing.

• Replaced threads with Threading.TaskThreadCount console command for setting or getting the worker counts for thread pools

• Reduced the amount of worker tasks being created for the thread pools to be more in line of the amount of physical cores instead of logical

• Added Text Processing to ethic tooltips.

• Fixed planet modifiers not updating correctly in the colonization view.

• Fixed planet modifier icons in Expansion Planner not updating correctly in some cases.

• Fixed the overlap of Dig Sites and Devastation components in Planet UI.

• When using Observer mode, Mercenary Enclaves no longer appear in the regular empire list, they're at the end classified as "Minors"

• Unemployment information in the central bar of the planet view has been replaced with information on planet Denizens (Civilians or Maintenance Drones)

• Added support for districts_per_building for District Specializations. This allows limiting the number of buildings based on the number of built districts but  is not currently being used yet.

• Console command effect can now target the observed country with root

• Added [c]faction_demands_met_mult[/c] and [c]faction_demands_unmet_mult[/c] which affect faction approval or disapproval of met or unmet demands.

Our release candidate is now up on the [c]cetus_open_beta[/c] branch, so you can get started now if you like.

There are a few things that aren’t in 4.3 that we plan on looking at in the future.

These include our planned changes to slavery, which are intended to clean up the mechanics surrounding the system by changing how we track slaves. The robot migration bugfix right at the end of the Open Beta highlighted some changes we want to make there, along with changes to how sticky jobs are - ideally we’d like pops to prefer jobs that make them happier, and migrate towards planets that are more habitable. Currently jobs have a bit of a death-grip on the pops working them, so they won’t shuffle out to make room for others unless something better appears directly in front of them.

The experiment with factions and ethics that we explored in Dev Diary #411 will make a return in the future as well. We’ll need those if we ever want to do anything more with those systems.

Multiplayer stability and the AI competence level aren’t where I want them yet either and this is and will continue to be a priority until we get them where we want them to be

There were also a ton of suggestions and feedback from the Open Beta that will form a backlog we’ll be working from for the foreseeable future.

On Tuesday, we’ll be holding a release stream, playing on the live branch and answering more questions.

Post-release support will continue on the 4.3 Cetus release, likely for around 4-6 weeks. After that, we may move towards being ready to talk about more of what’s coming next to Stellaris, as we get ready to celebrate Stellaris’ 10th anniversary!

I expect that as with most launch weeks, we won’t have a dev diary next Thursday (unless there’s something important to talk about), so I’ll see you with a post-release support diary on the 26th of March.

See you then!