by PDX-Loke

Greetings all,

Another patch is ready for you to download and apply to your copy of Stellaris, improving the gameplay experience in a variety of ways.

4.0.14 is now available via Steam, and soon also on GOG and MS.

Please find the patch notes below.
Balance​

• Fixed Hollow Bones being 1/10 as impactful as it should be. Stay away from big planets birds.
  
• Incubators modifiers will now be a bit more granular and not go from 30% bonus to -10% growth with 40 pops.
  
• Colony Auto-designation now better takes Urban districts into account for flipping to the various Urban-related designations. (We still recommend picking the one you want though. This was mostly intended for the AI)
  
• Gestalt empires can now build trade modules on starbases
  
• Non-gestalt empires can now build solar panels on starbases
  
• Added Logistic traditions for gestalt empires
  
• Split Enforcers and Telepaths
  
• Refactored the psionic pop output from telepaths to be on the psi corp building instead
  
• Introduced Job Efficiency for Psionic Pops modifier where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Cyborg Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Added Job Efficiency for Organic Pops modifier and implemented where appropriate
  
• Empire and Planet Limits for Fallen Empire Buildings now have the following rules:
  
  • If you stole the plans through artifact diving or were gifted them by the Hive FE: Empire/Planet Limit = number of times you rolled the building, capped at 3
    
  • If you got the tech through Enigmatic Engineering: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 3
    
  • If you have Cosmogenesis: Empire Limit: Uncapped, Planet Limit = 6
    
  • If you’re a Fallen Empire: Empire/Planet Limit: Uncapped
    
  • Note: It is our intention to replace this with a system that turns Fallen Empire building techs into Repeatable Technologies that base the maximum number of how many you can have be tied to the number of times you have researched it. This is likely to be in 4.1, though may sneak into a late 4.0 patch.

UI​

• Reintroduced the Build District and Clear Blocker button in the District Details side panel.
  
• Planetary Habitability and Devastation should no longer overlap
  
• The column for number of pops in the species view should now correctly display larger numbers of pops without forcing a new line
  
• Added a tooltip to make the inability of building on an occupied planet clearer
  
• Improved Zone replacement popup

Bugfix​

• Dictatorial Cybervision Enforcers will no longer give themselves an infinite amount of bonuses generating infinite amount of resources
  
• Fixed Corporate Angler council positions giving mult modifiers instead of add modifiers
  
• Fix occupied planets still adding their production and modifiers to their owners
  
• Modifier now scales with pop amount in production box and tooltip of planet view
  
• Prevent jobs with 0 workforce being displayed in the Strata production tooltip
  
• Assimilating a species now assimilates all armies, colony ships, and leaders of that species
  
• Added a 1 day count before VIR's enclave tutorial.
  
• Exotic Metabolism tooltip now lists Pop Growth and Habitability.
  
• Fixed the energy cost that scales with pops in the Cyberization event "Radical Physiology"
  
• Changed the French translation of Research from Enquêter to Recherche
  
• Added appropriate effects tooltip for Augmentation Bazaar.
  
• The Celestial Orrery Supercomputer now only gives Physicist jobs
  
• Removed incompatible tech from Wilderness Agenda option
  
• Players can no longer colonize with a prebuilt colony ship if the species isn't allowed to colonize.
  
• Fixed a bug with the years_of_peace trigger that made it not evaluate the delay properly, it was always treated as zero
  
• Fixed an exploit where people could edit their saved empires to start with late-game rewards and effects.
  
• Enforcers now benefit from Specialist modifiers again.
  
• Fixed tooltips for Angler civics
  
• Fixed tooltips for all Astrometeorology civics
  
• Fixed issues with the Astrometeology building for gestalts
  
• Fixed the Beastmaster civic tooltip
  
• Updated nested tooltips for Civil Education
  
• Fixed stability from Byzantine Bureaucracy not applying
  
• Streamlined the tooltip for Catalytic Processing
  
• Fixed Wild Swarm mentioning ships when combined with Cordyceptic Drones
  
• Improved the Dark Consortium tooltip
  
• Contingency will no longer fail to sterilize branch offices on a planet
  
• Demolishing a building on an occupied planet is no longer possible
  
• Blocked Resource Processing Center technology for Wilderness

AI​
Note: These changes are just the start, we have more significant changes planned for upcoming patches. In the meantime, we recommend turning difficulty scaling off if you are finding higher difficulty settings far too easy.

• AI empires will focus a bit more on Industry and Alloys.
  
• AI empires value capital building upgrades more.
  
• AI empires are more likely to build Anchorages if their naval capacity usage is high.
  
• Adjusted the bonuses AI empires receive on higher difficulties. AI empires will now also gain bonuses to automatic resettlement on higher difficulties.

Stability​

• Fixed OOS with different amounts of popgroups
  
• Fixed a Ship Design related OOS
  
• Fixed another possible OOS at reconnection
  
• Fixed CTD that happened on the planet UI for Contingency taken planets

Modding​

• Prescripted empires' starting flags now need to be defined in the 'prescripted_flags' folder

We hope you will enjoy these changes even if they happen to thwart your well-conceived exploits. Do let us know if you devise new ones. Thank you!

written by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

The 4.0.13 update released today with the following changes:

[expand type=details expanded=false]
Improvements

• Behemoth Fury is now available to Wilderness Empires.
  
• Improved tooltips for the following civics:
  
• Functional Architecture/Constructobot
  
• Environmentalist
  
• Astro-mining Drones
  
• Maintenance Protocols
  
• Ascensionists
  
• Augmentation Bazaars
  
• Brand Loyalty
  
• Death Cults
  
• Dimensional Worship
  
• Balance
  
• Mutagenic Habitability now counts all planet types as ideal for upgrading Gaiaseeders
  
• Dramatically increased the draw chance for the Mineral Purification, Global Energy Management and Food Processing technologies
  
• Rebalanced the Pleasure Seeker civics to transform Civilians into Hedonists
  
• Logistic Drones are now Complex Drones not Menial Drones

Bugfix

• Fixed invaded pre-ftls not becoming biotrophies
  
• People once more die when they are put in the Lathe
  
• Bio-Swarmer missiles can now be used by all biological ships with medium weapon slots (including defensive platforms)
  
• Pops that are being pampered will now be forcibly switched to the correct living standard
  
• Replacing a district specialisation no longer destroys CyberCreed buildings that should be kept
  
• Corrected a tooltip bug where a planet would display itself as a possible migration target.
  
• Fixed capitalisation for resources in trade policies
  
• Updated assorted modifiers that still referred to Clerks
  
• A Trade deficit now causes Job Efficiency and Empire Size issues
  
• Fixed the tooltip for the Polymelic trait
  
• Armies now protect 200 pops from raiding, not 2
  
• Blocked the Federation Code technology for some empires, for example homicidals. To draw the tech, the empire is also required to be in contact with someone they can form a federation with.
  
• Blocked the Development focus task Form a Federation for some empires, for example homicidals
  
• Added swaps for some empires, for example homicidals, for the Development focus rewards Federation Code, Xeno Diplomacy, and Xeno Relations
  
• Updated the Colony view tab mentioned in the hint of the focus task Enact a Planetary Decision to say Management
  
• CyberCreed pops with Ritualistic Implants can now colonise planets
  
• Fixed Recycled and Luxurious traits not applying to Roboticists
  
• Catalytic Processing Civic now lists correct information regarding job swap
  
• Cost for repairing orbital rings when you use bioships is now correctly calculated
  
• Gale Speed trait gained from Defeat no longer causes errors
  
• Fixed scope for LeaderShipSurvivalReason
  
• Fixed scope bug for ruler in leader_election_weight
  
• Fixed Worker Coop gaining Elite strata jobs in too many places and tidied up the civic tooltip
  
• Updated tooltip for Warrior Culture civic
  
• Added a pre-list colon to the Feudal Society civic's tooltip
  
• The everychanging stone can no longer cause artisans to have negative mineral upkeep
  
• Gave the Neural Chorus advanced authority the pop growth speed modifier that had accidentally been assigned to Memory Aggregator
  
• The Planetary Supercomputer no longer has an empire cap of 1
  
• The Research Institute/Planetary Supercomputer no longer give scientist capacity
  
• Added dashes to Traits tooltips and list items
  
• Fixed trigger logic for criminal syndicates and federations
  
• Fixed Offspring Bioships not being visible in game
  
• Fixed Offspring Bioships not being labelled as non-offspring ships in the ship designer
  
• The Machine Uprising will no longer spawn 100 machine pops for every 1 missing housing. However the pop-rework seems to have handled 6 million machine pops okay.
  
• Stopped removing occupation armies for bombarded and invaded planets on savegame load
  
• Repairing ruined buildings in zones is now always possible.

Performance

• Flattened pop job modifier node into planet one
  
• Made clearing modifiers a fire and forget job

Stability

• Fixed a possible OOS when a player leaves the game.
  
• Fix CTD when generating a Cosmic Storm mesh.
  
• Fixed a random freeze when loading save with stations containing multiple defence platforms.

[/expand]
We expect the 4.0.14 release will be next week (probably on Tuesday), and is expected to include some fixes to a few infinite loops and some select balance changes (like splitting up Enforcers and Telepaths again). It will be a short work week here in Sweden, so it’s likely to be the only update of the week.

As I mentioned last week, with multiplayer stability largely handled, AI is one of our next focuses. Today I want to talk about AI benchmarks, and have a discussion with you about how we should measure “success”.


The AI in Stellaris has always been designed as very reactive, and AI personality has a massive impact on their behavior. Our goal is for our AI empires to feel like actors in the galactic play - acting in a manner consistent with their Origins, Authorities, Civics, and Ethics rather than always picking the “meta” play.

They do still need to put up a bit of a challenge though, especially at higher difficulties.

The first economic goal we make for our AI is “please don’t collapse in an economic death spiral”, and it’s actually far better at that in 4.0 than it was in 3.x. The current AI does NOT meet the second “provide an adequate challenge” goal though.

One of the fundamental tools we have for our AIs are resource targets in their economic plans. They’ll strive to reach those targets, and many of these are set as “scaling” - if they meet the target, they’ll raise the target the next month. This attempts to ensure that they’ll keep thirsting for ever larger research and alloy numbers (or food if they use bioships!) as is appropriate. This is one of the tools we also use to make them exhibit their ethics - Materialists scale their Research targets faster than other empires, so they’ll inherently be more likely to build more Research specializations, while Spiritualists are more likely to have a lot of Unity specializations.

Ironically, improving AI tends to consume any benefits we carved out through performance improvements. The stronger the AI, the more stuff they have - fleets, colonies, and so on.


One way to decide whether or not the AI is performing up to expectations is through benchmarking - what kind of fleet power, alloy generation, and research generation should they have by 2230, 2250, 2300, and so on? Around what year should they hit 10k fleet power?

Then there come questions around whether the benchmarks should differ based on personality type. Should it be different if they’re Democratic Crusaders vs. Peaceful Traders? Or does differentiating them there make the friendlier empires too weak?

I’ve got my own set of benchmarks that come from running 3.14 and from the multiplayer community, and in general, I’m okay with Grand Admiral being significantly harder than it was in 3.14. but I’m interested to hear what you all strive for.

How much research and alloy production do you try to have 10 years, 30 years, 100 years, and when the end-game crisis comes calling? (Include your preferred difficulty settings and galaxy sizes as well if you could, as well as if you change any other important settings like tech costs.)


We’re going to continue with 4.0 post release support.

Since the next two weeks are both short weeks in Sweden, our next Stellaris Dev Diary will be June 12th. (You’ll be hearing from me in patch notes in the meantime though.)