Stellaris 4.4.5 "Pegasus" Early Open Beta (c22e) now available!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

I know that yesterday I said that we were planning on putting 4.4.5 up as an Open Beta sometime next week, but based on the reactions we received in the thread we decided to expedite it a little bit, and we have an early version of 4.4.5 up momentarily on stellaris_test so you can try it over the weekend.

This release includes a number of fixes, including our planned changes to Operational Reserves, but this is a still-in-development release that has had minimal QA review - there's a reason we were originally planning on releasing it next week.

Here are the release notes:

(Ongoing)

Feature​

• Added a Resource Abundance slider in galaxy settings.

  • This slider ranges from “Scarce” to x5 in 0.25 increments, where x1 is approximately the resource abundance of v4.3 and x5 is essentially 4.4’s “resources everywhere”.

  • The default is x2. We do recognize that this is a little confusing, but it gives you more control of getting it where you want.

• Added Waystation Voidlure modules

• Added Arkship Voidlure Array module that allows you to right-click on a system to lure space fauna.

Improvement​

• Space Fauna now disable waystations instead of destroying them. They will be re-enabled once the fauna leaves or is destroyed.

• Added a fallback event for the CFL if the tournament goes on for more than 3 years, this will ensure that you don't end up with fleets that can never repair

• Details map mode now toggles between 3 states: Normal -> Detailed -> Hidden -> Normal.

• Clarified the map mode tooltips.

• Logistic Ship automation now defaults to on for Harvest Resources and off for Waystation collection.

• The game will now recalculate species rights on loading a save game.

• Upgrading fleet will reissue upgrade order if one got interrupted because of the mobile starbase jumping away to another system.

Balance​

• Operational Reserves Changes:

  • Operational Reserves now track Energy and Minerals 1:1 (previously 3:1).

  • Maximum Operational Reserves now scale with the number and tier of owned Arkships (base 15,000, plus 5,000 / 7,500 / 10,000 per Tier I / II / III Arkship) instead of a fixed cap.

  • Civilian Arkships grant an additional 2,500 Operational Reserve capacity per Tier.

  • Resource Silos, Fallen Empire Resource Silos, Arkship Resource Silos, and Waystation Logistics Silos now raise a Nomadic empire's maximum Operational Reserves.

  • Added a Critical stage to the Operational Reserves track with severe research, Unity, and Alloy penalties; the Festival, Conserve, and Burn approaches now gate on reserve stage rather than fixed thresholds.

  • The Critical Operational Reserves stage now also penalizes the populations the reserves sustain: Lithoid pops lose Happiness, pop growth, and Job Efficiency, and Mechanical and Machine pops lose Job Efficiency.

• Wanderlust now gives some of its bonuses immediately, and the second half after completing 4 categories, not all of them. Category bonuses and progression remain unchanged.

• Rewards from the Arkship Readiness Checklist now last 20 years.

• Rebalanced the Ranger Paladin trait.

• Reduced the opinion penalties empires hold against Nomadic Empires for strip-mining, reprocessing planets, and Exodus Jumps, and made these penalties decay more quickly.

• Nomadic Primal Calling now starts with a Voidlure Array equipped on the Arkship

• Removed the nomadic tradition swap for Domestication tradition finisher

• Rebalanced the Passenger Satisfaction situation for Forever Cruise to allow staying in the middle stage longer

• The Champion's forge now waits 20 years before firing instead of 10, this should give the galaxy a bit longer to find each other before all getting introduced at the tournament.

Bugfix​

• Arkships now have a 10 year cooldown after benefiting from a Max Aura effect, meaning you can't chain them to get a level 10 ascension Arkship super early.

• Nomads can now build Megastructures in a system containing one of their Waystations even if the system has not been surveyed.

• Fixed that Tombworld Earth was spawning way too often, so often that it would spawn instead of the UNE when playing the GRS or CoM.

• Fixed an issue where pre-FTL earths couldn't have defensive armies (sorry this does not fix the issue of not having the cool unique armies :frowning2: )

• Assault Armies will no longer split into separate Transport Fleets after leaving the planet surface.

• Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.

• Fixed a very rare case where if you settled and left the event open for too long another empire could claim the system. The fix is delaying them from claiming the system for 300 days. Please make a decision before then.

• The CFL should no longer accept Orbital Rings as contestants (even though that’s why they call it a Championship Ring, right?)

• Added a fallback if your arkship was in a hyperjump when progressing through the adAkkaria event chains

• Due to legacy script your capital arkship was never able to find precursors

• Stopped Scan Debris Contract from auto-cancelling on accept

• Blocked the Sectors Map Mode for Nomads.

• Fixed habitats not using the correct entity from your chosen shipset.

• Fixed some scripted issues with refugee modifiers.

• Fixed issues with Payback and Broken Shackles district specializations.

• Fixed farming colony designation not applying to agri-drones.

• Bio-Repurposing tradition now provides the nomadic effects for nomadic necromancers instead of the necromancer effects.

• Brought the cost and upkeep of the Nanite Hub waystation module in line with the equivalent starbase building.

• Fixed the Realign Shields decision not recognising some pulsar systems.

• Living and Grid Amalgamated species now have bespoke living standards so they don't use consumer goods.

• Fixed Astro Harvester job modifiers not applying in some cases.

• Harvesting a celestial body that has no deposit no longer incurs a diplomatic opinion penalty.

• The Creativity Exhibition Vault now boosts Cruise Passengers for Forever Cruise empires, instead of applying its bonus to Bio-Trophies they do not have.

• Buildings that can be built on a planet or its orbital ring (Psi Corps, Planetary Shield Generator, Galactic Stock Exchange, Embassy, Noble Estates, Slave Processing Facility) can no longer be built as both a colony building and an Arkship starbase building at the same time.

• The Galactic Stock Exchange can no longer be built on both a planet and its orbital ring at the same time.

• Fixed pops sometimes being stuck in the Assimilation citizenship or stratum.

• Pops that already have the cybernetic or psionic trait are no longer flagged for assimilation they do not need.

• Negative arkship modifiers from Grand Refurbishment and Operational Checklist are removed when another empire conquers the arkship, so you aren't stuck with a bunch of negative modifiers and no way to remove them.

• Arkship can now issue a survey command by clicking the survey button and clicking on the system in galaxy map

• Fixed the tooltip information where the survey single planet vs surveying the whole system information was mixed up

• Fixed Waystations, Arkships and modded starbases that have forced components from starbase modules and buildings regressing their designs and losing components.

• If you are too slow and don't stop the Khan Aspirant from becoming the Khan they now properly despawn, avoiding a scenario where there are two Khans.

• If you play with 0 marauders enabled and as a Heirs of the Khan empire, then the backup Marauder empire will avoid Fallen Empire systems so that they don't get killed in the first few weeks, making you the Khan while others are still figuring out Blue Lasers.

• Fixed a crash when updating waystation networks

• Ranger Lodge now correctly informs that Biologists are converted into Rangers, instead of saying Rangers are converted into Rangers

• Arkship construction notification now mentions an arkship, not a starbase

• Missions counters can now be infinite

• Fixed missing localization for message descriptions

• Fixed the End-Bringers' shrouded world failing to spawn in games featuring Nomadic empires.

• Fixed Arkships unintentionally syncing to the same auto-generated design. Building or upgrading one Arkship will no longer sometimes overwrite armaments or utilities on others of the same type.

• Fleets that are repairing or upgrading now correctly sync their FTL, Jump Drive, and Catapult actions.

• Fixed an issue with generated empire adjectives.

• Inetian trader special project bound to planet, meaning that if your science ship were to blow up you can still progress

• The Claimant event's description received a scope fix

• "Secrets of the Past" event from "Biomorphosis" Ascension Situation blocked for Nomads

• Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.

• Nomads will no longer get double the benefit from their own resource producing megastructures. Megastructures will no longer be giving resources directly and a waystation will always be needed to collect those resources.

• Planets can now be bombarded during first contact war

• Contact view now properly closes if diplomacy window is opened

• Fixed some megastructure effects showing incorrect modifier icons and “+100%”.

• Rogue Servitors can no longer take a machine species as their secondary species when playing as a Forever Cruise. The machine can not be pampered.

AI​

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.

UI/UX​

• The Operational Reserves situation now shows its capacity breakdown and stored/total readout in the Situation Log instead of an empty Finisher Effects panel.

• The Operational Reserves topbar tooltip now shows a predicted monthly change with per-resource Energy and Minerals contributions, each with a resource icon and coloured +/- value, and a Hold-ALT hint to expand the produced/consumed breakdown.

• When enabling nomads in empire creation, the civilian arkship is now selected by default.

• Arkships no longer show false clearable-blocker icons in the outliner.

• Fixed incorrect Arkship button texts in the planet view.

• Anomaly window now also shows the name of the anomaly

Performance​

• Fixed science ship Excavate and Astral Rift automation causing a recurring daily stutter when no reachable target was available.

Modding​

• Situations can define total_progress with per-stage section_weight for progress bars whose length and stage bands scale at runtime, with auto-generated _max_progress_add/_mult country modifiers and a situation_progress_percent trigger.

• Situations, stages, and approaches support custom_tooltip and custom_tooltip_with_modifiers (replacing the approach-only active_tooltip), and situations can override their Situation Log Active Effects and Finisher Effects panel titles and bodies.

• Added the orbital_ring_and_arkship_equivalent_absent scripted trigger.

• Starbase modules now also support `scripted_effect_cooldown`, `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag`, and `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag_desc`

We still have a number of changes coming to this branch, and will update the Open Beta next week. 4.4.5 is currently expected to release in about two weeks.