Stellaris Dev Diary #413 - 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Has Released, What’s Next?

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The 4.3 ‘Cetus’ update is live after months of Open Beta feedback. That said, the work doesn’t stop at release and there’s still a lot to do.

Overall, the 4.3 release is pretty stable. The lengthy Open Beta process let us avoid many of the major issues that often follow a release, so the post-release support has largely been continued bugfixing and some balance adjustments.

4.3.1 was released as a quick hotfix to stop the Resume button from breaking 4.2 Ironman saves - attempting to quick-load a save from a previous major version will now divert you to the main menu and give a Version Mismatch error, advising you to roll back to the correct version if you’re on Steam, or warning you that forcefully loading the save might have unpredictable results on other versions. We also marked 4.2 and earlier saves as incompatible, to give a little more warning that loading them may brick the save.

Improvement 

• The Resume button on the launcher will no longer load incompatible saves, potentially ruining them. It will instead send you to the Main Menu.

• Updated save compatibility to show the incompatible save icon for all pre-4.3 save games.

Bugfix

• Avian portrait granted by Paradox Account log in has returned.

Stability and Performance

• Fixed corruption in modifier name generation that sometimes caused CTD when generating OOS logs.

We released 4.3.2 on Tuesday with some fixes that were mostly already underway before the release, plus a couple of things from the first day or two post-release.

Improvement

• Fleets are now willing to fight further from the center of the system. Especially noticeable if fighting stationary targets at the edge of the system.

Balance

• The Grand Fleet achievement now needs 500 fleet size instead of 120.

• Halved the Empire Size penalty from colonies for Wilderness.

• Reduced the Empire Size penalty from colonies for Sovereign Guardianship civics by 25%.

• Ritualistic Implants now also give a bonus to Artisan Job Efficiency.

• You no longer get a popup offering the Galactic Archivism technology the first time you acquire a specimen. Instead, the technology has an increased weight based on the number of specimens you have acquired, as well as if you have a deal with the Curators active.

Bugfix

• The Aberrant Dimensional Portal glows with an orange light.

• The Vehement Dimensional Portal glows with a green light.

• Renamed the Infernal species to Thermophile while in game.

• Fixes bug when AI generates space fauna designs that doesn't have weapon components.

• Reordered the music tracks in the original soundtrack and corrected the steam playlist.

• Fixes the BioGenesis achievements not being obtainable on MS Store.

• Machine, Lithoid, and Infernal empires that use Bioships now allocate their food budgets for colonization correctly.

• Realigned images of research building variants.

Stability and Performance

• Fixed wrong stride used in particle system leading to overwrite of data that sometimes also crashes the game.

• Fixed CTD in diplomatic relation distance to border calculation not accounting for invalid relations in a safe way.

Modding

• Spinner UI element do now have a null object to avoid crashing if not found.

• OverlappingElementsBox UI element do now have a null object to avoid crashing if not found.

• ListBox UI element do now have a null object to avoid crashing if not found.

• Fixed issue with SmoothListBox UI element not using null object properly and thus may crash.

And now we’re onto the first bigger post-release support updates, which is going up to the [c]stellaris_test[/c] branch right now.

Improvement

• Added Naval Capacity and Command Limit sliders to Advanced Galaxy Settings. 

  • These range from x0.5 to x5.0 and are multiplicative with all other modifiers in the game. (Warning: Increasing Naval Capacity will have late-game performance and balance implications. Changing Command Limit will have balance implications.) 

  • The Naval Capacity slider does not change the Naval Capacity hard cap of 9999.

Balance

• Increased the bonus on a number of buildings that provided 5% efficiency bonuses to 10%. 

  • Affected Buildings: Slave Processing Facility, Orbital Slave Processing Hub, Administrative Complex and its many variants, Data-Driven Theorem Facility, Distributed Design Center, and Metallurgical Research Lab

• The Cyborg version of Learning Algorithm now grants +1 effective leader skill level instead of +1 councilor level

• Vaults of Knowledge now grants +1 leader trait pick. The Memory Vaults building no longer provides unity, but instead grants +1% Monthly Unity per Destiny trait. Its energy upkeep now also scales with Destiny traits.

• Planned Polymorphism bonus has been reduced from 15 to 10%

• Soldiers, Battle Thralls, and Warrior Drones now provide the same Naval Cap (4) for the same upkeep (1 alloy)

  • The Thrall World modifier now also reduces Alloy Upkeep of Soldier Jobs (i.e. Battle Thralls) by 25%.

• The Lavafalls planetary modifier now provides 0.2 alloys per 100 thermoforger instead of 0.02

• The Evaluator job has been added to the list of Influential Jobs

• Increased the Lifespan bonus from the Luminary trait from Under One Rule from +40 to +60, so they are more likely to survive to Ascension

• Weakened Voidworms on Civilian and Cadet difficulty.

• Empire-designed Space Fauna defensive components are now scaled to be 80% of Bio-ship components. 

  • Space Fauna Crystalline Plating now also includes the damage reduction effect. Increased their hull modifiers to match the standard variants. The Space Fauna XL variant gives even more of both.

  • These are massive buffs and may require additional balancing if we overshot the mark, considering Space Fauna gain additional bonuses from rarity.

  • Removed some mutations from Frenzied Voidworms (on all difficulties) due to these changes.

Bugfix

• Planetary Automation should now reliably work. (If it's not doing anything, it's often due to the Prevent Deficit Construction setting.)

  • Automation will once again build districts, and will build buildings or districts that do not directly add jobs (like Mineral Processing Plants or City Districts) if they are in the build list for that type of colony.

  • Reduced the number of civilians necessary to trigger Automation checks to 50.

• Starbases no longer receive double armor nor propagate their armor to all of their defense platforms.

  • WARNING: By fixing this bug, some of your Starbases may be much weaker than they were before! Be prepared to fortify the border!

• Fixed a bug that was preventing exceeding your Naval Capacity from applying the penalty to ship upkeep.

• Fixed housing reduction from virtual trait not applying to individualist machines.

• Fixes the soundtrack CSV metadata for the Original Game Soundtrack and standardizes file naming across mp3/flac formats. The CSV had incorrect track ordering, wrong track names, and missing qualifiers for bonus/alternate takes. File naming was inconsistent between formats and across discs.

• Fixed Imperious Architecture not providing bonus to the Reassembled Ship Shelters or the Hive Capital Buildings

• Fixed an issue where the AI would lock itself into buildings two fortresses over and over

• Fixed an inverted trigger on the Telepathy technology

• Adjusted the trigger for the Extradimensional Experimentation planetary decision so it cannot be enacted if you're missing a Data Driven Theorem Facility

• Fixed the logic for Artisan stations being destroyed. They will no longer claim to be destroyed forever when they still have stations around.

• The Specialist Training tradition now properly works for Gestalt empires

• The Take Point tooltip now properly explains that it is only active during wars

• Updated the pop buying Numistic Order event to 4.0 pop numbers

• The White Hell anomaly will now properly add a physics deposit.

• Fixed the modifiers from the Psionic Disease event. They now grant Medical Worker bonus workforce.

• The Synaptic Lathe no longer turns into a broken planet after being destroyed by a Star Eater

• The Ragged Flags planetary modifier from the pre-ftl plague situation now has a duration and will eventually expire

• Fire cult modifier now has localization instead of an empty string

• Fixed the planet killer component "Planet Smelter" (Infernals DLC) not having a cooldown or charging-time

• Removed tech_federat\\342\\200\\216ion_code.dds from the game, filesystems not supporting UTF8 has some issues with it (should not be there either)

• Fixed cases of the Cyborg trait not being added to Driven Assimilator rulers

• Fixed Tier 6 Battleship reactor having incorrect resource costs

• Fixed AI empires being unable to build Bioships due to missing shipyard starbase type condition

• Updated the tooltip of the Ministry of Culture selling event to 4.0 standard

• Fixed the Thought Pre-emption edict increasing job upkeep instead of reducing it

• Fixed Aerospace Adaptation upkeep modifiers not being correctly applied and removed via the Biogenesis event chain

• Fixed Missing localization when manually using Hyper Relays

• Fixed Terraforming for Gestalt AI initiating concurrent hive/machine worlds terraformings leading to economic struggles

• Fixed Permanent Employment civic producing zombie pops stuck as Specialists or Elites with no valid job

• Fixed incorrect conversion percentages displayed in Trade Policy tooltips for Consumer Benefits, Marketplace of Ideas, Trade League, Holy Covenant, and Mutual Aid

• Augmentation Bazaar and Corporate Vampires are now mutually exclusive

• Fixed Sentinels or Prethoryn Scourge-occupied planets retaining their purge type permanently after the Scourge is defeated.

• Adjusted AI Unity budgets so they won't always hold a third of their Unity in reserve just in case they get a Shroud blocker.

• Guardian Matrix now also receives the Colony Empire Size penalty reduction all other Sovereign Guardian civics got in 4.3.2.

• Crime Automation now increases jobs 10 at a time (or reduces them 1 at a time) to hit the "sweet spot" faster to better avoid crime events.

• Tier 0 shields no longer grant an army bonus. That's only intended for techs you actually research.

• Sapient, Autonomous, and Precognitive Siege Computers now both have +80% Damage vs. Starbases and Bombardment Damage. (Precognitive Siege Computers retain their Tracking bonus, the other two retain their Evasion bonus.)

• Non-Gestalts on Shattered Rings now have access to the Generator World colony designation

• Fixed starbase hull/armor regeneration bonus applying incorrectly.

• Resolved an issue causing nested tooltips not to stick

• Voidworms will now eventually stop bombarding a planet. Previously, if they could not find a good route home, they’d abort that order, see this delicious planet right next to them, and go for another round.

  • Voidworms will use Experimental Subspace Navigation to get home if absolutely necessary.

AI

• Edited AI economic plans and budgets to work better with the 4.3 ruleset.

• Improved AI weighting and decision-making around Urban Districts.

• AI now realizes that Wilderness Harmonic Cores and Singing Cliffs produce Unity, Moltguts produce Alloys, and Threadways produce Trade.

• The AI will no longer infinitely build three Strongholds on a planet, only to immediately destroy them and start building them again.

Stability

• Fixed more rare threading issue with modifier names using wrong memory model for synchronization in threaded context.

• Fixed an OOS between win and non-win machine when using a picket computer during a fight

One of the major additions in this one is a set of sliders in Advanced Galaxy Settings that give you the ability to scale all Naval Capacity or Command Limits in the game multiplicatively, ranging from x0.5 to x5.0. Adjusting these could have significant balance and performance implications.

Some of you were asking to have huge fleets, well, go for it.

We’ve also fixed a major bug where Starbases were gaining double armor and replicating it to all of their defense platforms, and as a major quality of life improvement for wider empires - Planetary Automation should once again be fully functional.

If you are on Steam and want to try out these changes, hop over to the [c]stellaris_test[/c] beta branch. (Right-click Stellaris, Properties -> Game Versions & Betas)

Last Thursday we announced the “Utopian Abundance” initiative. 

On May 11th, as part of the Stellaris 10 year anniversary celebrations, we will be rolling Utopia, Synthetic Dawn, the Humanoid Species Pack, and most of the Galaxy Edition Upgrade into the base game. (The Infinite Frontiers e-book is being retired rather than being rolled into the base game.) This will grant everyone access to Hive Mind empires, Gestalt Machine Intelligences, the humanoid portraits, civics, and shipsets, and all the other features from these three DLCs.

All Stellaris PC players will have access to these DLCs going forward.

As was done with Hearts of Iron IV when a similar bundling of DLCs into the base game happened, the price of the base Stellaris game will increase by $10 (or the equivalent in local currency) when it occurs on May 11th.

We announced this early to be as transparent as possible, as early as possible. 

• If you or a friend only wants the base game, you may want to grab it during the Spring Sale before the price change goes through. 

• If you were planning to buy Utopia, Synthetic Dawn, or Humanoids, we want you to be aware that these will be part of the base game in the near future. So please keep this in mind when deciding what to purchase during the Steam Spring Sale.

Our plan is to continue with post-release support for the next few weeks, so keep those feedback posts and bug reports coming. 4.3.3 should be released sometime early next week, and work will continue on 4.3.4.

Bugfixing and AI work will be the primary focus of the design Custodians, while multiplayer stability is the primary focus of the programming team. OOSes are diabolical to pin down though, so any logs you guys can provide of reproducible desyncs would be greatly appreciated.

Reporting an Out of Sync on the Bug Report Forum is always helpful. If it’s reliably reproducible, then it’s worth its weight in gold.

In order to diagnose and fix desync (OOS) issues we need:

1. An OOS report from the host

2. An OOS report from the client who desynced

3. Bonus points for including an autosave from the month before (optional)

You can find OOS reports:

on Windows: [c]C:\\Users\\YOURUSERNAME\\documents\\paradox interactive\\stellaris\\oos[/c]

on Mac: [c]~/Documents/Paradox\\ Interactive/Stellaris/oos[/c] where the Documents directory is in your home directory

on Linux: [c].local/share/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/oos[/c]

If you know a specific sequence of actions that lead to a reliable desync, include those in your report.

Thank you!

Next week’s dev diary will likely be about 4.3.4 and 4.3.5.

See you then!