Stellaris news & patch notes

by Eladrin

Happy Friday! We've updated the stellaris_test_4.5 branch again today, and added a rollback branch (stellaris_test_4.5_rollback) just in case, since this one modified a few hundred events.

Stellaris 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta Update 3 Release Notes

Balance​

• The Stellar Cannon is now a Tier 3 tech, and requires Wormhole Stabilization and UV Lasers.

Bugfix​

• Fixed a wide-ranging regression that caused many anomalies, events, and origin features to silently stop working - most visibly the classic Precursor dig sites no longer appearing when surveying, and the Fear of the Dark origin's hostile empire failing to spawn.

• Empires are no longer allowed to join ongoing wars against their subjects/overlords.

• Arkship weapon and reactor specializations now clearly indicate in their tooltip that they add Strategic Resource upkeep, with a link to the Strategic Resources concept explaining what that means.

• The game will no longer tell the player to kill their own Behemoth to get rid of the Elder Voidspawn.

• 4.4.6 Fix: Fixed science ships being lost permanently when set to automatically explore Astral Rifts. Previously an automated science ship would vanish upon reaching a rift and never return, leaving its scientist stranded and cluttering the Outliner with ships stuck Missing In Action.

• 4.4.6 Fix: Automated ships no longer switch off automation and abandon their current task (constructing a station or megastructure, researching an anomaly or special project, exploring an Astral Rift, or carrying out a special order) when avoiding hostile fleets.

• Fixed several minor artifact and anomaly research projects (including the Precursor "Delve into the Secrets" actions, Master's Writings, and numerous other special projects) granting no reward when completed as a Nomad empire.

• Fixed an issue where a Nomad waystation disabled by hostile space fauna during a raid could remain disabled after the fauna left the system.

• Fixed the "Gather Information" operation sometimes failing to deliver its intelligence report when the target empire no longer existed.

• Fixed a script error in the genetic mutation event that could occur for Spiritualist empires.

• The "Assault Armies" and "Shipyard" buttons on the Arkship Ship Controls tab are now properly localized in all languages

• Fixed the Drums of War event "The Claimant" displaying an incorrect species insult when referring to the rival claimant

• Synaptic Lathes with many pop groups on them no longer sometimes stop purging.

• Fixed Synaptic Lathes not purging pops. Existing saves with broken lathes will repair at some point over the course of a year.

• Nomads can now reactivate and own gateway megastructures

• Nomad AI empires now build contract-required Waystations even when over their Starbase Capacity, instead of leaving those contracts unfulfilled.

• Scan Debris Contracts now automatically cancel when the target debris decays before it can be scanned, instead of remaining active indefinitely.

• The Prosperous Unification origin now displays correct, Arkship-specific effects and flavor text for Nomadic empires, instead of planet-based districts and "Homeworld" terminology

• Wars declared with the Nomadic Raid, Plunder, or Wipe Them Out war goals now include the war type in their name, consistent with other war goals

• The Anomalous Cube archaeology site now refers to the correct empire (or if communications haven't been established yet, then to "this empire")

AI​

• AI empires will no longer fire the Stellar Cannon into the territory of empires they are at peace with (unless recently insulted), and will now prioritize static targets like upgraded starbases and defense platforms when at war.

UI/UX​

• Notification Icons fix, general centralization

Stability​

• Fixed a crash when quitting the game on macOS.

Modding​

• Resource Regions can now be created and weighted using scripting.

• You can now visualize precursors using the debug

Here's the compiled list from the previous Open Beta releases:

Previous 4.5 Open Beta Release Notes

Feature​

• Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:

  • THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.

  • Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.

  • Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently

  • Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently

  • Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth

  • Simplify factions randomization logic

  • Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.

• Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads

• Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:

  • Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.

  • Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.

  • Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet.

• Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).

  • Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.

  • Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)

• Cosmogenesis is now available for Nomads

• Added a nomad compatible version of Storm Chasers

  • Storm Attraction is now fully functional for mobile arkships

• Empires now have more control over their colors:

  • Added a toggle and selectors in empire creation so you can select your map border and fill colours independently of your flag color.

  • Ship Color can now be selected independently from flag colors in Empire Creation.

  • Color swatches in the species creator's flag editor and ship-set selector now show the name of the selected color on hover.

Improvement​

• Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" list will now always show a variety of systems with different resources, so if you have a dozen physics deposits, they won't hide all of your energy systems. All "best systems" finders now show up to 12 systems.

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

Balance​

• Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.

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

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

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

• Increased base knights upkeep by .15 alloys and .15 consumer goods

• Increased soldier alloy upkeep for arkship military zones by 0.1

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

• Consecrate World changes:

  • Consecrate World can now be declared on a curated set of worlds tied to your empire's origin and traits (such as Gaia and relic worlds, and origin-specific worlds like toxic, shrouded, rift, or arc-furnace worlds).

  • Reworked the Consecrated Worlds reward — consecrating worlds now grants a deterministic, empire-wide bonus to Unity, Amenities, and Spiritualist Ethics Attraction that scales with the number of Consecrated Worlds (+10% / +20% / +40% at 1 / 2 / 3), replacing the previous randomized per-world outcome.

• The Paladin Ship now has a dedicated combat computer with Line tactics, giving it proper combat positioning while staying directable in combat, instead of ignoring attackers and holding position.

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

Bugfix​

• AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.

• Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.

• Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.

• Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.

• Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.

• Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.

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

• Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules).

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed pop and country ethics being permanently and progressively wiped across the galaxy during play.

  • What makes a man turn neutral? A lust for gold? Power? Or an error in the pop ethics randomizer?

• Fixed Protostars not counting towards having energy deposits.

• Extended swapping logic for soldiers into knights. All sources of soldier jobs should now be covered

  • Knight swaps should now work properly for nomads

• The Joyous Warrior trait now specifies that its effect can only trigger with the relevant leader leading planetary invasions

• If a system's starbase is unoccupied while all its planets are occupied, the system is no longer considered fully occupied.

• Fixed the crime events (among others) not firing on arkships

• Cryo-Sleepers no longer produce Crime/Deviancy

• Clarified the Creativity Exhibition Vault's tooltip for Forever Cruise Rogue Servitors: its production and upkeep effects reach all passengers, not just first-class Bio-Trophies.

• Fixed the Machine Uprising resolution notification showing "Unidentified Empire" instead of the names of the empires involved when an uprising was quelled or won.

• Synthetic Fertility Nomads are no longer able to build arkships until they have researched droids

• Fixed edge cases where Cetana would not properly turn hostile upon war declaration

• Added a missing nomad Archaeology notification string

• Fixed the Ness treasure system not spawning for non nomad empires

• Fixed the Gaia world from Starlit Citadel being impossible to colonize

• Fixed a missing icon in the Order's Keep concept tooltip

• The Crystalline Bane modifier should now get properly removed

• Adjusted the number of ships produced when using the Prethoryn Queen relic

• Wilderness and Synthetic Fertility now start with homeworlds of the proper size

• Fixed a case of double notification after a machine uprising ends

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" finder will now be based exclusively on raw star resources, and will be unaffected by modifiers like techs or cosmic storms.

• The Arc Furnace "best systems" finder will now only show systems that have a Molten World.

• Fixed numerous issues with Total Wars:

  • Nomadic Empires will now gain ownership of defeated Arkships and Waystations after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires will now steal a percentage of the population from planets they destroy during Total Wars.

  • Arkships defeated by Settled Empires are now destroyed after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires can now be defeated in Total Wars.

  • Taking planets in a Total War will now occupy them until the system is fully occupied, then annex them all at once. This prevents a bug where a system without a starbase didn't rebuild it if only some planets were taken.

• The leader tooltip is now shown in all places where it should be shown

• 'Delicious Titans' planet modifier tooltip now correctly says 'Farmers are Converted in Titan Hunters' and doesn't show a broken icon.

• savefiles with pending first contact event no longer fail to pick an event sound

• Graphical crashfix related to Storm Forecast

• Entertainer jobs on Forever Cruise Arkships now correctly come from the Entertainment Hub specialization instead of the Operations Center.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when a Settled Empire's system is destroyed.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archive not being destroyed when a Waystation is lost or downgraded below Tier 2.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Mandatory Pampering now reduces First Class Passenger Consumer Goods upkeep to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• AI nomads no longer accept and ignore Build Waystation contracts when at capacity

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Carrier-computer ships now position themselves using the longer of their weapon or strike craft range, so a carrier with no strike craft no longer charges into close range.

• Arkships without equipped weapons no longer charge into melee.

• Fixed fleets set to flee when overpowered evaluating their flee condition correctly on an Evasive stance, rather than always evading regardless of the threat.

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed issue with district indicators in the planet view

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• Fixed the Prospectorium's description incorrectly referring to the Scholarium.

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Federation voting laws now apply when joining and leaving ongoing wars

• Fixed manually issued system-wide Harvest orders queueing when there were no valid targets.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on surveying.

• Fixed the Declare War button tooltip being incorrect after leaving a federation.

• Fixed waylines persisting on the galaxy map after a waystation was removed.

• Fixed the Logistic Growth Scaling galaxy setting being truncated to one digit.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals are now a special subject type that provide resources to their Overlord through subject taxes. Any remaining pops and resources are handed up to the overlord when the subject finishes its work, instead of being lost when the subject's colony was abandoned. A Purging Complete notification lists the pops and resources handed over to the Overlord when a Purge Vassal finishes its work, including any incidental resources that the planet may have produced during their stay.

• Fixed Nomad Overlords not receiving the Unity (Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Necrophages) or Society Research (Devouring Swarms) generated when their temporary purge subjects purged pops - the reward now goes to the Overlord instead of being lost with the subject.

• Nomad purge subjects of assimilating empires (such as Driven Assimilators) now assimilate the pops they can rather than purging them, only exterminating pops that cannot be assimilated. The assimilated pops are handed up to the Overlord when the subject disbands, instead of the subject exterminating everyone or lingering forever as a separate empire.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals no longer establish Embassies, and other empires can no longer propose Embassies to them.

• Empires now correctly lower their opinion of a Nomad Overlord when its Purge Vassal Necrophages pops of their species

• Fixed Necropurge not always creating pops.

• The Judicial Execution leader trait now correctly grants bonuses when purging Thermophiles

• Fixed the Necrophage Elevation Ceremony failing on Arkships. Elevated pops now adapt to Arkship Habitability, and the Pops Necrophaged notification is now shown, highlighting the Arkship fleet

• Nomadic empires attempting to invade the first pre-FTL encounter are now correctly told that they need to survey the planet, not that their pre-ftl interference policy is preventing them from invading the planet.

AI​

• AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.

• Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.

• AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.

• AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.

• Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.

• The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.

• The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.

• AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them.

• A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

• Fixed AI not declaring war if their naval capacity is too high.

UI/UX​

• Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.

• Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.

• Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered

• Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.

  • Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.

  • Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.

• Hints nomad players that they can excavate owned dig sites if they have the Frontier Archaeology tradition

• Building slots are highlighted when they are selected

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed the Open Orbital Ring button being hardcoded in planet_view.gui

Performance​

• macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.

• Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated.

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability​

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.

• Fixed a potential crash when generating empire name labels on the galaxy map.

• Fixed some more multiplayer out-of-sync issues.

Modding​

• Remove obsolete faction parameters

• Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).

• Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.

• Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic

• Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers

• Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Added pretriggers to ships

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

• Removed min_navy_for_wars from country types.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.

• Added the weapon_and_strike_craft range_components option for ship behaviors.

• Expanded the ship_behavior template documentation (move patterns, combat_movement, flee_when_overpowered, allow_emergency_ftl, allow_disengage).

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Updated the documentation for the `create_country` effect.

• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource (optionally a percentage of it) to another country in a single call create_message now supports a "resources" variable type that prints a country's current stockpile of the listed resources as one string of icon + amount pairs

by Eladrin

We've just deployed a hotfix that resolves an issue introduced in 4.4.5 where Science Ships using automation would get lost forever when exploring Astral Rifts. It should now be available on Steam, GOG, and MS Store.

4.4.6 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes

Bugfix​

• Fixed science ships being lost permanently when set to automatically explore Astral Rifts. Previously an automated science ship would vanish upon reaching a rift and never return, leaving its scientist stranded and cluttering the Outliner with ships stuck Missing In Action.

• Automated ships no longer switch off automation and abandon their current task (constructing a station or megastructure, researching an anomaly or special project, exploring an Astral Rift, or carrying out a special order) when avoiding hostile fleets.

Here are the 4.4.5 release notes from Tuesday:

4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Patch Release Notes​

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.

• Fleet automation menus now offer per-action options.

• Nomad Arkships and Logistic Ships can fine-tune Harvest, Strip Mine, and Deep Scan automation, including whether to Harvest unsurveyed, depositless, waystation, friendly, or hostile-owned worlds, and whether to rescan when Deep Scanning.

  • Fleet automation settings can be saved as the default for a ship type and applied to all ships of that type at once, and each fleet remembers the settings it was last given.

  • Construction Automation now has options for Mining Stations, Research Stations, Observation Posts and Special Projects.

  • Added the Explore automation order to Arkships. Note: Arkships with the Explore order will attempt to navigate to Points of Interest if possible.

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.

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers can research machine assembly technologies to upgrade their passengers

• Regular Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Robot Assembly Plants building

• Completed Archaeological Sites and Astral Rifts will now be hidden in a non detailed galaxy map mode.

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

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.

• Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.

• Arkship District Specializations that increase weapon damage (Laser Capacitors, Flight Decks, Ammunition Lines, or Missile Silos) now also add +0.15 strategic resource upkeep to Soldiers.

• Species with Mutagenic Habitability living on Arkships will now gain 50% habitability (like Regular Arkship Habitability and Habitat Auto-modded habitability) instead of 30%

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

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

• "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.

• (Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.

• Pops can now migrate from Arkships

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled

• When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly.

• Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.

• Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight

• Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation

• Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier

• Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers

• Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description

• Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active

• Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds

• Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!

• You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal

• Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set

• Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist

• Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.

• Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.

• Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits.

• Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets.

• Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.

• Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal

AI​

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.

• The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships.

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

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

• Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.

• Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log

• Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list.

• The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings.

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

Performance​

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

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability​

• Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups.

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`

• and are now optional for is_point_of_interest.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

Earlier this week we released the Stellaris 4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Update with the following changes:

4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Patch Release Notes

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.

• Fleet automation menus now offer per-action options. 

  • Nomad Arkships and Logistic Ships can fine-tune Harvest, Strip Mine, and Deep Scan automation, including whether to Harvest unsurveyed, depositless, waystation, friendly, or hostile-owned worlds, and whether to rescan when Deep Scanning. 

  • Fleet automation settings can be saved as the default for a ship type and applied to all ships of that type at once, and each fleet remembers the settings it was last given. 

  • Construction Automation now has options for Mining Stations, Research Stations, Observation Posts and Special Projects.

  • Added the Explore automation order to Arkships. Note: Arkships with the Explore order will attempt to navigate to Points of Interest if possible.

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.

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers can research machine assembly technologies to upgrade their passengers

• Regular Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Robot Assembly Plants building

• Completed Archaeological Sites and Astral Rifts will now be hidden in a non detailed galaxy map mode. 

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

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.

• Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.

• Arkship District Specializations that increase weapon damage (Laser Capacitors, Flight Decks, Ammunition Lines, or Missile Silos) now also add +0.15 strategic resource upkeep to Soldiers.

• Species with Mutagenic Habitability living on Arkships will now gain 50% habitability (like Regular Arkship Habitability and Habitat Auto-modded habitability) instead of 30%

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

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

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

• 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. 

• (Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.

• Pops can now migrate from Arkships

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled

• When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly. 

• Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.

• Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight

• Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation

• Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier

• Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers

• Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description

• Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active

• Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds

• Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!

• You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal

• Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set 

• Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist

• Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.

• Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.

• Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits. 

• Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets. 

• Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.

• Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal

AI

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.

• The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships. 

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

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 

• Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.

• Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log 

• Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list. 

• The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings. 

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

Performance

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

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability

• Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups. 

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`

• and are now optional for is_point_of_interest.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu. 

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

Most further changes are being made on the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ branch, which is currently up as an open beta on the stellaris_test_4.5 branch. We’re looking at doing a 4.4.6 hotfix today or tomorrow to fix an issue where automated science ships get stuck forever in Astral Rifts (manually assigned science ships don’t get sent MIA for all eternity), but other than that we expect this to be the last release of the 4.4 ‘Pegasus’ cycle.

We also updated the ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta this week. This week’s updates include early versions of Cosmogenesis and Storm Chasers for Nomadic empires, and made a few updates to the Knights of the Toxic God.

4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Release Notes

New additions since last week are in italics.

The 4.5 Open Beta now also includes all changes from 4.4.5.

Feature

• Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:

  • THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.

  • Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.

  • Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently

  • Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently

  • Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth

  • Simplify factions randomization logic

  • Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.

• Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads

• Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:

  • Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.

  • Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.

  • Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet. 

• Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).

  • Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.

  • Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)

• Cosmogenesis is now available for Nomads

• Added a nomad compatible version of Storm Chasers

  • Storm Attraction is now fully functional for mobile arkships

• Empires now have more control over their colors:

  • Added a toggle and selectors in empire creation so you can select your map border and fill colours independently of your flag color.

  • Ship Color can now be selected independently from flag colors in Empire Creation.

  • Color swatches in the species creator's flag editor and ship-set selector now show the name of the selected color on hover.

Improvement

• Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" list will now always show a variety of systems with different resources, so if you have a dozen physics deposits, they won't hide all of your energy systems. All "best systems" finders now show up to 12 systems.

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

Balance

• Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.

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

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

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier 

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

• Increased base knights upkeep by .15 alloys and .15 consumer goods

• Increased soldier alloy upkeep for arkship military zones by 0.1

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

• Consecrate World changes:

  • Consecrate World can now be declared on a curated set of worlds tied to your empire's origin and traits (such as Gaia and relic worlds, and origin-specific worlds like toxic, shrouded, rift, or arc-furnace worlds).

  • Reworked the Consecrated Worlds reward — consecrating worlds now grants a deterministic, empire-wide bonus to Unity, Amenities, and Spiritualist Ethics Attraction that scales with the number of Consecrated Worlds (+10% / +20% / +40% at 1 / 2 / 3), replacing the previous randomized per-world outcome.

• The Paladin Ship now has a dedicated combat computer with Line tactics, giving it proper combat positioning while staying directable in combat, instead of ignoring attackers and holding position.

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

Bugfix

• AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.

• Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.

• Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.

• Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.

• Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.

• Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.

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

• Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules). 

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed pop and country ethics being permanently and progressively wiped across the galaxy during play. 

  • What makes a man turn neutral? A lust for gold? Power? Or an error in the pop ethics randomizer?

• Fixed Protostars not counting towards having energy deposits.

• Extended swapping logic for soldiers into knights. All sources of soldier jobs should now be covered

  • Knight swaps should now work properly for nomads

• The Joyous Warrior trait now specifies that its effect can only trigger with the relevant leader leading planetary invasions

• If a system's starbase is unoccupied while all its planets are occupied, the system is no longer considered fully occupied.

• Fixed the crime events (among others) not firing on arkships

• Cryo-Sleepers no longer produce Crime/Deviancy

• Clarified the Creativity Exhibition Vault's tooltip for Forever Cruise Rogue Servitors: its production and upkeep effects reach all passengers, not just first-class Bio-Trophies.

• Fixed the Machine Uprising resolution notification showing "Unidentified Empire" instead of the names of the empires involved when an uprising was quelled or won.

• Synthetic Fertility Nomads are no longer able to build arkships until they have researched droids

• Fixed edge cases where Cetana would not properly turn hostile upon war declaration

• Added a missing nomad Archaeology notification string

• Fixed the Ness treasure system not spawning for non nomad empires

• Fixed the Gaia world from Starlit Citadel being impossible to colonize

• Fixed a missing icon in the Order's Keep concept tooltip

• The Crystalline Bane modifier should now get properly removed

• Adjusted the number of ships produced when using the Prethoryn Queen relic

• Wilderness and Synthetic Fertility now start with homeworlds of the proper size

• Fixed a case of double notification after a machine uprising ends

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" finder will now be based exclusively on raw star resources, and will be unaffected by modifiers like techs or cosmic storms.

• The Arc Furnace "best systems" finder will now only show systems that have a Molten World.

• Fixed numerous issues with Total Wars:

  • Nomadic Empires will now gain ownership of defeated Arkships and Waystations after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires will now steal a percentage of the population from planets they destroy during Total Wars.

  • Arkships defeated by Settled Empires are now destroyed after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires can now be defeated in Total Wars.

  • Taking planets in a Total War will now occupy them until the system is fully occupied, then annex them all at once. This prevents a bug where a system without a starbase didn't rebuild it if only some planets were taken.

• The leader tooltip is now shown in all places where it should be shown

• 'Delicious Titans' planet modifier tooltip now correctly says 'Farmers are Converted in Titan Hunters' and doesn't show a broken icon.

• savefiles with pending first contact event no longer fail to pick an event sound

• Graphical crashfix related to Storm Forecast

• Entertainer jobs on Forever Cruise Arkships now correctly come from the Entertainment Hub specialization instead of the Operations Center.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when a Settled Empire's system is destroyed.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archive not being destroyed when a Waystation is lost or downgraded below Tier 2.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Mandatory Pampering now reduces First Class Passenger Consumer Goods upkeep to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• AI nomads no longer accept and ignore Build Waystation contracts when at capacity

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Carrier-computer ships now position themselves using the longer of their weapon or strike craft range, so a carrier with no strike craft no longer charges into close range.

• Arkships without equipped weapons no longer charge into melee.

• Fixed fleets set to flee when overpowered evaluating their flee condition correctly on an Evasive stance, rather than always evading regardless of the threat.

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed issue with district indicators in the planet view

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• Fixed the Prospectorium's description incorrectly referring to the Scholarium.

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Federation voting laws now apply when joining and leaving ongoing wars

• Fixed manually issued system-wide Harvest orders queueing when there were no valid targets.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on surveying.

• Fixed the Declare War button tooltip being incorrect after leaving a federation.

• Fixed waylines persisting on the galaxy map after a waystation was removed.

• Fixed the Logistic Growth Scaling galaxy setting being truncated to one digit.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals are now a special subject type that provide resources to their Overlord through subject taxes. Any remaining pops and resources are handed up to the overlord when the subject finishes its work, instead of being lost when the subject's colony was abandoned. A Purging Complete notification lists the pops and resources handed over to the Overlord when a Purge Vassal finishes its work, including any incidental resources that the planet may have produced during their stay.

• Fixed Nomad Overlords not receiving the Unity (Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Necrophages) or Society Research (Devouring Swarms) generated when their temporary purge subjects purged pops - the reward now goes to the Overlord instead of being lost with the subject.

• Nomad purge subjects of assimilating empires (such as Driven Assimilators) now assimilate the pops they can rather than purging them, only exterminating pops that cannot be assimilated. The assimilated pops are handed up to the Overlord when the subject disbands, instead of the subject exterminating everyone or lingering forever as a separate empire.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals no longer establish Embassies, and other empires can no longer propose Embassies to them.

• Empires now correctly lower their opinion of a Nomad Overlord when its Purge Vassal Necrophages pops of their species

• Fixed Necropurge not always creating pops.

• The Judicial Execution leader trait now correctly grants bonuses when purging Thermophiles

• Fixed the Necrophage Elevation Ceremony failing on Arkships. Elevated pops now adapt to Arkship Habitability, and the Pops Necrophaged notification is now shown, highlighting the Arkship fleet

• Nomadic empires attempting to invade the first pre-FTL encounter are now correctly told that they need to survey the planet, not that their pre-ftl interference policy is preventing them from invading the planet.

AI

• AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.

• Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.

• AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.

• AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.

• Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.

• The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.

• The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.

• AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them. 

• A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

• Fixed AI not declaring war if their naval capacity is too high.

UI/UX

• Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.

• Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.

• Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered

• Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.

  • Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.

  • Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.

• Hints nomad players that they can excavate owned dig sites if they have the Frontier Archaeology tradition

• Building slots are highlighted when they are selected

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed the Open Orbital Ring button being hardcoded in planet_view.gui

Performance

• macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.

• Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated. 

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.

• Fixed a potential crash when generating empire name labels on the galaxy map.

• Fixed some more multiplayer out-of-sync issues.

Modding

• Remove obsolete faction parameters

• Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).

• Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.

• Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic

• Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers

• Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect. 

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Added pretriggers to ships

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

• Removed min_navy_for_wars from country types.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.

• Added the weapon_and_strike_craft range_components option for ship behaviors.

• Expanded the ship_behavior template documentation (move patterns, combat_movement, flee_when_overpowered, allow_emergency_ftl, allow_disengage).

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Updated the documentation for the `create_country` effect.

• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource

• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource (optionally a percentage of it) to another country in a single call

• create_message now supports a "resources" variable type that prints a country's current stockpile of the listed resources as one string of icon + amount pairs

We’ve also added more color customization to empires:

The Flag and Ship tabs in Empire Creation will now allow you to pick colors for your map borders and fill and ship colors independently from your Empire Flag. These selections also include tooltips that show the RGB value of the selected color.

Beautiful. (?)

Stellaris Wallpapers Updated

One more update!

The Stellaris Wallpaper Album has been updated with more than 40 images from Nomads, BioGenesis, Shadows of the Shroud, and the Infernals Species Pack.

What’s Next?

While work will continue on the 4.5 branch throughout the summer, this will be the last scheduled dev diary until August 20th, when we’ll likely continue discussing the changes in the Cygnus update.

Have a great summer!

Hello everyone! QA's tests on the 4.5 'Cygnus' Open Beta 2 update went faster than expected, and we felt that we had no real reason to hold the update until tomorrow. We've updated the stellaris_test_4.5 branch with the following changes:

4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta 2 Release Notes

The 4.5 Open Beta now also includes all changes from 4.4.5.

Feature​

• Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:

  • THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.

  • Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.

  • Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently

  • Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently

  • Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth

  • Simplify factions randomization logic

  • Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.

• Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads

• Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:

  • Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.

  • Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.

  • Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet.

• Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).

  • Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.

  • Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)

• Cosmogenesis is now available for Nomads

• Added a nomad compatible version of Storm Chasers

  • Storm Attraction is now fully functional for mobile arkships

• Empires now have more control over their colors:

  • Added a toggle and selectors in empire creation so you can select your map border and fill colours independently of your flag color.

  • Ship Color can now be selected independently from flag colors in Empire Creation.

  • Color swatches in the species creator's flag editor and ship-set selector now show the name of the selected color on hover.

Improvement​

• Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" list will now always show a variety of systems with different resources, so if you have a dozen physics deposits, they won't hide all of your energy systems. All "best systems" finders now show up to 12 systems.

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

Balance​

• Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.

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

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

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

• Increased base knights upkeep by .15 alloys and .15 consumer goods

• Increased soldier alloy upkeep for arkship military zones by 0.1

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

• Consecrate World changes:

  • Consecrate World can now be declared on a curated set of worlds tied to your empire's origin and traits (such as Gaia and relic worlds, and origin-specific worlds like toxic, shrouded, rift, or arc-furnace worlds).

  • Reworked the Consecrated Worlds reward — consecrating worlds now grants a deterministic, empire-wide bonus to Unity, Amenities, and Spiritualist Ethics Attraction that scales with the number of Consecrated Worlds (+10% / +20% / +40% at 1 / 2 / 3), replacing the previous randomized per-world outcome.

• The Paladin Ship now has a dedicated combat computer with Line tactics, giving it proper combat positioning while staying directable in combat, instead of ignoring attackers and holding position.

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

Bugfix​

• AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.

• Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.

• Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.

• Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.

• Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.

• Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.

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

• Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules).

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed pop and country ethics being permanently and progressively wiped across the galaxy during play.

  • What makes a man turn neutral? A lust for gold? Power? Or an error in the pop ethics randomizer?

• Fixed Protostars not counting towards having energy deposits.

• Extended swapping logic for soldiers into knights. All sources of soldier jobs should now be covered

  • Knight swaps should now work properly for nomads

• The Joyous Warrior trait now specifies that its effect can only trigger with the relevant leader leading planetary invasions

• If a system's starbase is unoccupied while all its planets are occupied, the system is no longer considered fully occupied.

• Fixed the crime events (among others) not firing on arkships

• Cryo-Sleepers no longer produce Crime/Deviancy

• Clarified the Creativity Exhibition Vault's tooltip for Forever Cruise Rogue Servitors: its production and upkeep effects reach all passengers, not just first-class Bio-Trophies.

• Fixed the Machine Uprising resolution notification showing "Unidentified Empire" instead of the names of the empires involved when an uprising was quelled or won.

• Synthetic Fertility Nomads are no longer able to build arkships until they have researched droids

• Fixed edge cases where Cetana would not properly turn hostile upon war declaration

• Added a missing nomad Archaeology notification string

• Fixed the Ness treasure system not spawning for non nomad empires

• Fixed the Gaia world from Starlit Citadel being impossible to colonize

• Fixed a missing icon in the Order's Keep concept tooltip

• The Crystalline Bane modifier should now get properly removed

• Adjusted the number of ships produced when using the Prethoryn Queen relic

• Wilderness and Synthetic Fertility now start with homeworlds of the proper size

• Fixed a case of double notification after a machine uprising ends

• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" finder will now be based exclusively on raw star resources, and will be unaffected by modifiers like techs or cosmic storms.

• The Arc Furnace "best systems" finder will now only show systems that have a Molten World.

• Fixed numerous issues with Total Wars:

  • Nomadic Empires will now gain ownership of defeated Arkships and Waystations after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires will now steal a percentage of the population from planets they destroy during Total Wars.

  • Arkships defeated by Settled Empires are now destroyed after Total War status quo victory.

  • Nomadic Empires can now be defeated in Total Wars.

  • Taking planets in a Total War will now occupy them until the system is fully occupied, then annex them all at once. This prevents a bug where a system without a starbase didn't rebuild it if only some planets were taken.

• The leader tooltip is now shown in all places where it should be shown

• 'Delicious Titans' planet modifier tooltip now correctly says 'Farmers are Converted in Titan Hunters' and doesn't show a broken icon.

• savefiles with pending first contact event no longer fail to pick an event sound

• Graphical crashfix related to Storm Forecast

• Entertainer jobs on Forever Cruise Arkships now correctly come from the Entertainment Hub specialization instead of the Operations Center.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when a Settled Empire's system is destroyed.

• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archive not being destroyed when a Waystation is lost or downgraded below Tier 2.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Mandatory Pampering now reduces First Class Passenger Consumer Goods upkeep to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• AI nomads no longer accept and ignore Build Waystation contracts when at capacity

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Carrier-computer ships now position themselves using the longer of their weapon or strike craft range, so a carrier with no strike craft no longer charges into close range.

• Arkships without equipped weapons no longer charge into melee.

• Fixed fleets set to flee when overpowered evaluating their flee condition correctly on an Evasive stance, rather than always evading regardless of the threat.

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

• Fixed issue with district indicators in the planet view

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• Fixed the Prospectorium's description incorrectly referring to the Scholarium.

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Federation voting laws now apply when joining and leaving ongoing wars

• Fixed manually issued system-wide Harvest orders queueing when there were no valid targets.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on surveying.

• Fixed the Declare War button tooltip being incorrect after leaving a federation.

• Fixed waylines persisting on the galaxy map after a waystation was removed.

• Fixed the Logistic Growth Scaling galaxy setting being truncated to one digit.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals are now a special subject type that provide resources to their Overlord through subject taxes. Any remaining pops and resources are handed up to the overlord when the subject finishes its work, instead of being lost when the subject's colony was abandoned. A Purging Complete notification lists the pops and resources handed over to the Overlord when a Purge Vassal finishes its work, including any incidental resources that the planet may have produced during their stay.

• Fixed Nomad Overlords not receiving the Unity (Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Necrophages) or Society Research (Devouring Swarms) generated when their temporary purge subjects purged pops - the reward now goes to the Overlord instead of being lost with the subject.

• Nomad purge subjects of assimilating empires (such as Driven Assimilators) now assimilate the pops they can rather than purging them, only exterminating pops that cannot be assimilated. The assimilated pops are handed up to the Overlord when the subject disbands, instead of the subject exterminating everyone or lingering forever as a separate empire.

• Nomadic Purge Vassals no longer establish Embassies, and other empires can no longer propose Embassies to them.

• Empires now correctly lower their opinion of a Nomad Overlord when its Purge Vassal Necrophages pops of their species

• Fixed Necropurge not always creating pops.

• The Judicial Execution leader trait now correctly grants bonuses when purging Thermophiles

• Fixed the Necrophage Elevation Ceremony failing on Arkships. Elevated pops now adapt to Arkship Habitability, and the Pops Necrophaged notification is now shown, highlighting the Arkship fleet

• Nomadic empires attempting to invade the first pre-FTL encounter are now correctly told that they need to survey the planet, not that their pre-ftl interference policy is preventing them from invading the planet.

AI​

• AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.

• Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.

• AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.

• AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.

• Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.

• The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.

• The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.

• AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them.

• A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

• Fixed AI not declaring war if their naval capacity is too high.

UI/UX​

• Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.

• Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.

• Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered

• Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.

  • Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.

  • Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.

• Hints nomad players that they can excavate owned dig sites if they have the Frontier Archaeology tradition

• Building slots are highlighted when they are selected

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed the Open Orbital Ring button being hardcoded in planet_view.gui

Performance​

• macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.

• Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated.

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability​

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.

• Fixed a potential crash when generating empire name labels on the galaxy map.

• Fixed some more multiplayer out-of-sync issues.

Modding​

• Remove obsolete faction parameters

• Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).

• Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.

• Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic

• Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers

• Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Added pretriggers to ships

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

• Removed min_navy_for_wars from country types.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.

• Added the weapon_and_strike_craft range_components option for ship behaviors.

• Expanded the ship_behavior template documentation (move patterns, combat_movement, flee_when_overpowered, allow_emergency_ftl, allow_disengage).

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

• Updated the documentation for the `create_country` effect.

• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource (optionally a percentage of it) to another country in a single call create_message now supports a "resources" variable type that prints a country's current stockpile of the listed resources as one string of icon + amount pairs

QA found one known issue to add among the new changes:

• Nomadic Cosmogenesis empires can build the Synaptic Lathe as expected, but since it appears under "Planets" in the Outliner and they usually have that off by default, it will not be listed until you turn it on.

To access the Stellaris beta, go to your Steam Library, right-click the game, and select "Properties". From there, choose the "Betas" tab, and in the "Beta Participation" dropdown menu, select the "stellaris_test_4.5" beta branch from the list. Thank you for playing Stellaris!

Hello everybody! The Stellaris 4.4.5 'Pegasus' update should now be ready for download via Steam, GOG, and MS Store. Please find the patch notes below.

4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Patch Release Notes​

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.

• Fleet automation menus now offer per-action options.

  • Nomad Arkships and Logistic Ships can fine-tune Harvest, Strip Mine, and Deep Scan automation, including whether to Harvest unsurveyed, depositless, waystation, friendly, or hostile-owned worlds, and whether to rescan when Deep Scanning.

  • Fleet automation settings can be saved as the default for a ship type and applied to all ships of that type at once, and each fleet remembers the settings it was last given.

  • Construction Automation now has options for Mining Stations, Research Stations, Observation Posts and Special Projects.

  • Added the Explore automation order to Arkships. Note: Arkships with the Explore order will attempt to navigate to Points of Interest if possible.

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.

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers can research machine assembly technologies to upgrade their passengers

• Regular Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Robot Assembly Plants building

• Completed Archaeological Sites and Astral Rifts will now be hidden in a non detailed galaxy map mode.

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

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.

• Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.

• Arkship District Specializations that increase weapon damage (Laser Capacitors, Flight Decks, Ammunition Lines, or Missile Silos) now also add +0.15 strategic resource upkeep to Soldiers.

• Species with Mutagenic Habitability living on Arkships will now gain 50% habitability (like Regular Arkship Habitability and Habitat Auto-modded habitability) instead of 30%

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

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

• "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.

• (Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.

• Pops can now migrate from Arkships

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled

• When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly.

• Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.

• Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight

• Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation

• Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier

• Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers

• Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description

• Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active

• Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds

• Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!

• You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal

• Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set

• Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist

• Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.

• Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.

• Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits.

• Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets.

• Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.

• Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal

AI​

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.

• The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships.

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

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

• Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.

• Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log

• Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list.

• The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings.

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

Performance​

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

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability​

• Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups.

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`

• and are now optional for is_point_of_interest.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

If you're using UI mods, you'll need to update them to access some of the new options. (Some have a "beta" version that is already updated for these changes.) Thank you for playing Stellaris!

by Eladrin

Hello, Stellaris Community!

Europe swelters under the summer’s first heatwave, and yesterday we updated the 4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Open Beta on the stellaris_test branch with some more changes.

Stellaris 4.4.5 ‘Pegasus’ Open Beta Release Notes

New changes are in italics.

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.

• Fleet automation menus now offer per-action options. 

  • Nomad Arkships and Logistic Ships can fine-tune Harvest, Strip Mine, and Deep Scan automation, including whether to Harvest unsurveyed, depositless, waystation, friendly, or hostile-owned worlds, and whether to rescan when Deep Scanning. 

  • Fleet automation settings can be saved as the default for a ship type and applied to all ships of that type at once, and each fleet remembers the settings it was last given. 

  • Construction Automation now has options for Mining Stations, Research Stations, Observation Posts and Special Projects.

  • Added the Explore automation order to Arkships. Note: Arkships with the Explore order will attempt to navigate to Points of Interest if possible.

Improvement

• Space Fauna now disables 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.

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers can research machine assembly technologies to upgrade their passengers

• Regular Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Robot Assembly Plants building

• Completed Archaeological Sites and Astral Rifts will now be hidden in a non detailed galaxy map mode. 

• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.

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.

• Star Seeker Celebrations now provide +100% all Job Efficiency, +100% Resources from Jobs, +100% Pop Growth Speed, and -75% Diplomatic Weight from Economy.

• Arkship District Specializations that increase weapon damage (Laser Capacitors, Flight Decks, Ammunition Lines, or Missile Silos) now also add +0.15 strategic resource upkeep to Soldiers.

• Species with Mutagenic Habitability living on Arkships will now gain 50% habitability (like Regular Arkship Habitability and Habitat Auto-modded habitability) instead of 30%

• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.

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. 

• (Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.

• Pops can now migrate from Arkships

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building

• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled

• When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly. 

• Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.

• Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate

• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight

• Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation

• Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier

• Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers

• Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description

• Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active

• Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds

• Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!

• You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal

• Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set 

• Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist

• Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.

• Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.

• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.

• Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits. 

• Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets. 

• Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.

• Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description

• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin

• The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.

• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.

• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.

• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.

• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.

• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.

• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.

• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.

• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation

• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.

• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.

• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow

• AI nomads no longer accept and ignore Build Waystation contracts when at capacity

• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads

• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined

• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.

• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers

• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.

• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar

• Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.

• Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal

AI

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.

• The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships. 

• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

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 

• Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.

• Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log 

• Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list. 

• The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings. 

• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.

• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

Performance

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

• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability

• Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups. 

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`

• and are now optional for is_point_of_interest.

• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.

• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu. 

• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

One of the big changes in this update is a revamp on the Automation menus for ships, intended to give you more control over what they’re doing. 

Harvest from empty space, not my friends.

The Return of our Ethical Refactoring

Well that title certainly sounds ominous.

Back in February, we briefly added a “risky” change to the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta, relating to having mixed ethics within a single pop group. At the time we deemed it “not ready for release”, but we’re still interested in getting it into the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian Update, as it’s absolutely essential for Willpower (releasing in 4.6).

Since it’s so important for our future plans, we want to put this through a longer Open Beta period, which means we’ll have two of them running at once.

The 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta is a very early build, so includes a number of other experimental changes which may or may not make it to the final release - consider everything in this branch as tentative and yet to be balanced.

MacOS builds can also run 4.5 natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation. We’d like to get stability and performance information from the community about this change. (Internally, it seems to be pretty nice.)

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Release Notes

Feature

• Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:

  • THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.

  • Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.

  • Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently

  • Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently

  • Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth

  • Simplify factions randomization logic

  • Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.

• Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads

• Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:

  • Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.

  • Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.

  • Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet. 

• Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).

  • Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.

  • Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)

Improvement

• Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.

Balance

• Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.

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

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

• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier 

• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).

• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.

• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.

Bugfix

• AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.

• Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.

• Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.

• Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.

• Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.

• Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.

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

• Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules). 

• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.

• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.

• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.

• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.

• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.

• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.

• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).

AI

• AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.

• Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.

• AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.

• AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.

• Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.

• The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.

• The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.

• AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them. 

• A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.

• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.

• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.

UI/UX

• Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.

• Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.

• Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered

• Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.

  • Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.

  • Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.

Performance

• macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.

• Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated. 

Stability

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.

Modding

• Remove obsolete faction parameters

• Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).

• Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.

• Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic

• Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers

• Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`

• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect. 

• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.

I was hoping to get the 4.5 Open Beta up alongside this dev diary, but we ran into some issues that we were still tracking down while I was writing this dev diary earlier this week. We hope to resolve those and have the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta available before the weekend on the stellaris_test_4.5 beta branch, though it may slip to early next week.

We expect to update the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta with more changes next week (a day or two after 4.4.5 releases). It’s looking like Nomadic Cosmogenesis and Storm Chasers might have first drafts in that update, along with some fixes to Nomadic Purge Vassals (and purging in general).

What’s Next?

Next week’s dev diary will focus on the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta update, and will be the last dev diary until August, though there are likely to be ongoing updates to the 4.5 Open Beta during July.

See you then!

The Steam Summer Sale has just entered our orbit! Stellaris is up to 70% off, with additional discounts on selected DLC.

Trigger a galactic level crisis while having a cold beverage at your side and take a nice cruise through space and time!

Explore the sale here:

https://pdxint.at/3QyAFRc

-----

Stellaris × Print Clever: 10 Year Anniversary Store

Pre-orders for the Stellaris 10th Anniversary close on June 29, your only guaranteed way to secure exclusive items like the Bomber Jacket, Playing Cards, and collectible Pin before they're gone for good.

Pre-order before June 29: 

https://merch.stellaris.com/

-----

Stellaris × Makeship: Arkship Jumbo Plushie

Saved from a fate of Deep Scanning and Planetary Processing, this big, pillowy wanderer is ready to drift gently into your life. Give it the happy ending it deserves.

Get yours now:

https://pdxint.at/4fynUQF

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:

Stellaris 4.4.5 'Pegasus' Early Open Beta 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.

Hello there!

A tradition like no other! It's time for the Art of Nomads!

We know you might want to head straight for the artwork, which is fair because what the team has been able to pull off for Nomads is nothing short of amazing.

But before you do, we wanted to take this opportunity (grabbing the mic and/or embracing our inner Iggy, if you will) to talk about the last year for just a short bit.

On Nomads, we spent 682 days just creating art. That’s quite impressive for a period that only had 187 workdays.

This obviously resulted in a lot of art, and while we would like to show a lot of it we felt like around 150 (!) images and videos had to do for this time. And since the forum only allow for about 50 files per upload, we had to split this up into three parts.

A bit into that production, we changed direction quite drastically. It was for the better. And even if this led to better results in the end, it wasn't an easy thing to do - a lot of darlings were killed. A lot of good ideas were scrapped. A ton of good designs were “saved for later” (this is a term we like to use when something probably won’t be used later, but it’s easier to say that it’s “saved for later” rather than “will never see the light of day”, but who knows).

Anyways, that change of direction also came with a lot of questions: how do the Arkships look? What’s their purpose? How do they move? How big should they be? How should the Paragons look? What’s unique about them? What’s their backstory? These are all questions we always ask ourselves for every expansion, but this time we needed to figure out the answers faster.

The team answered the questions fast and efficiently, and with brilliant results.

One of the biggest creative decisions on Nomads was what kind of Arkships we were actually going to build. We landed on three main categories: Civilian, Military, and Science.

When you give three different roles their own visual identity, you get ships that actually say something. The Civilian Arkship feels like a home first, a vessel second. The Military carries weight and threat even at tier one. The Science Arkship reads as curious and outward-facing. We were going for showing genuinely different design philosophies wearing the same nomadic DNA, and we think you can feel that when you see them side by side.

The tiers were important too. A tier one Arkship should feel like a beginning. A tier three should feel like a civilization that has been moving through the galaxy for generations and shows it. That visual arc is something we are really proud of, and we did not want to lose it.

If you want to hear more about the processes, the thoughts behind the designs and direction we went with, check out the Art of Nomads video that we posted on our YouTube channel a while back.

To the Art Team; Lloyd, Felix, Tim, Emma, Mia, Erik, Cass and Gabs - Thank you for your fantastic art and your hard work on Nomads.

To the community, and to you who read this: Thank you for your continued support, during this and the last 10 years!

While we in the art team might not be the most active on the forums, Reddit or Discord, we read and see everything you write - so whenever you express appreciation for the work the team has put in it truly brings us so much joy in our little corner of the office here in Stockholm.

We can genuinely say that creating art for this game, your game, is an amazing honor, a privilege and a responsibility that we don’t take for granted. So thank you!

With that being said, we’d like to quote one of the best pilots in the history of the galaxy: “This is where the fun begins!”

Let’s look at some art!

/

Anton Wittberg Letoff - Art Manager & Producer

Scott Austin - Art Director

The Art of Stellaris: Nomads - Part 2 of 3

The Art of Stellaris: Nomads - Part 3 of 3

Lloyd Drake-Brockman - Concept Artist​

Defender of the Galaxy Concept Art​

Felix Englund - Concept Artist​

Character Art

Illustration Art

Ship Art

Tim Wiberg - 3D Artist

Stellar Cannon

Destroyed Arkship

Civilian Arkship

Emma Quer - 3D Artist​

Science Class Arkship

Hero Ship

Arkship Modules

Military Class Arkship

Mia Svensson - Animator

See some of Mia's work here!

Cassandra Lindquist - UI Artist​

Arkships schematics and UI Art

Sacred Path Event Image

Miscellaneous UI Art

Gabrielle Rodrigues - UI Artist​

Defenders of the Galaxy UI Art

Event Image & Arkship UI Art

Miscellaneous UI Art

Scott Austin - Art Director​

The Princess - Paragon Concepts

The Revenant

Designs Saved for Later

Diplomatic Rooms

Hello everyone, We trust that you are enjoying your time exploring the galaxy aboard the Arkships. The team has completed a batch of fixes and improvements for your journeys.

Stellaris 4.4.4 should now be ready for download via Steam, GOG, and MS Store. Please find the patch notes below.

Stellaris 4.4.4 patch notes

Feature​

• The Baol Life Seeding decision can now be enacted on artificial worlds and structures, and grants a unique deposit carrying over some of the bonus of a Gaia world

Improvement​

• AI will now consider abandoning a contract after 20 years have passed since they have accepted it.

• Idle Arkships and Logistic ships will notify the player about having completed the waystation/wayline stockpile collection.

• Added Logistics Hub indicator in the galaxy map.

• Arkship and Logistic harvest and strip mine orders issued on a whole solar system now target higher-value planets first instead of simply the nearest.

• Automated science ships that temporarily run out of reachable tasks now stay automated and resume when new work appears, instead of cancelling automation.

• Arkship random names in empire creation now use namelists for ships, not planets.

• Fleets will continue repairing and upgrading while following the moving arkship within the system.

• Fleets will continue following the arkship after having completed its upgrades.

• Improved the randomization of nomadic empires in galaxy generation, so they no longer take up the bulk of the advanced AI empire slots.

• Following ships will start charging its FTL drive without waiting for the target to complete its hyperlane jump.

• Becoming nomadic now embarks assault armies on the planet instead of destroying them.

Balance​

• Further reduced the effects that higher difficulties have on Forever Cruise progress.

• Deep Sleep civics can no longer be combined with the Synthetic Fertility origin to avoid breaking their starting situation and the identity repository.

• Rebalanced Arkship habitability from species traits.

• Arkship now have an inherent 40% habitability, matching that of habitats.

• Arkship Living Space Module grants +5% habitability in addition to the +1 district slot, but has an Exotic Gas cost and upkeep.

• Reduced the size bonus damage from the Vanguard and Knight Paladin subclasses.

• Adjusted the starting conditions of Forever Cruise and upkeep of Passengers to not start you in massive deficits. Generally speaking, there are now fewer Specialist Crew jobs present and Passengers (except for Bio-Trophy Passengers) have reduced Consumer Goods upkeep.

• Made the Forever Cruise center situation stage longer

• Added a Passenger Satisfaction penalty for abandoning Forever Cruise contracts

• The Doomsday modifier you get for successfully embarking now grants +60% habitability

• Increased offspring ship limits.

• Nomad strategic-resource harvesting reworked. Researching a resource's mining technology now grants a +50% harvesting yield for that resource (Volatile Motes, Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals, Living Metal), replacing the previous penalty for lacking the technology. This means that the bonus from the technology now applies to resources inherent to the planet class instead of only those from deposits.

• Tribute Vault and Pirate Hideout waystation modules now add their resources to the waystation's stockpile instead of silently adding them to the empire stockpile.

Bugfix​

• Literally unplayable typo fixed in "Agree to Disagree" perk tooltip.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't if the Nomads DLC is not enabled.

• Paladin ships can no longer cloak, as their UI does not support it.

• Fixed some Star Seekers checks only checking for the regular version of the civic.

• Nomad-exclusive technologies are now hidden if you decide to settle, and re-revealed if you then decide to embark and become nomadic again.

• fixed error logged when loading a save that contains popup informing about finish a tech research

• The gas giant created by the Primal Calling origin now starts surveyed.

• Corrected that mineral_insight_nomad did not provide job efficiency for astro-harvesting jobs.

• The Waystation Research Module now establishes communications with pre-FTL civilizations in its system.

• Planet class modifiers now apply to Arkship (ship-carried) colonies.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Total Wars between Nomads now properly move arkships between owners

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some modded ui cases.

• Fixed the Planet Modifier for doomsday empires embarking not being applied to their arkship.

• Fixed the Safe Haven modifier for embarking as a doomsday empire not having an icon.

• Allowed Beastports for non-Beastmaster empires if you have tech_alien_cloning..

• Fleets will no longer get stuck not being able to jump if the target their are following is currently moving.

• In "Decipher Strange Signal", the nomadic empire needs to be in the system owner's empire to make contact

• Fixed Nomadic empires not being able to enable L-Gates in some cases.

• Arkships no longer benefit twice from waystation network (wayline) modifiers.

• The Utility Deck specialization now correctly supports industrial buildings.

• Fixed Specific Cetana events being broken for Nomads

• Fixed delayed starbase spawn upon settling as Nomads

• Fixed Cetana's Databank Project not showing up under Ongoing Crises

• Fixed the Clone Army dig site spawn event localisation pointing towards an incorrect planet

• Fixed an edge case where it was possible to dismiss the Eternal Chorus scientist before the end of the event chain

• Fixed an instance of the Assist Colony special project not spawning properly upon accepting the contract

• Fixed the Sable Pilot trait icon being empty

• Fixed crash that could happen when federation members were destroyed while a proposal was still being voted

• "Cetana: Weak Links" entry stays inside the borders of the Situation Log window.

• Fixed 2 resort world specializations deleting themselves after being build

• Changing the situation approach will now update the effect list faster - some edge cases used to delay the changes in the effects for a few in game days.

• Abandoning an internal contract no longer sends an issuer toast

• The on_cancel effect only fires once for internal contracts

• Massively increased the likelihood that the Drums of War chains starts for Heirs of the Khan empires near the mid game year.

• Ignore border restrictions for nomadic countries in uplift-species special projects

• Fixed Recall paladin ability to work for nomad players

• Fixed Stellar Ignition Contract being impossible to complete

• Take the initiative projects will now abort if they are no longer needed.

• Fixed Wanderlust event chain re-appearing in the situation log

• The Doomsday event to unlock Embarking once again unlocks embarking.

• Lowered the Forever Cruise situation speed change based on difficulty

• Enabled the Sacred Path event chain to remain in the Situation Log after completing all Sacred Sites, so players can still find them on the galaxy map.

• Color change in "System Warmth Detected" event window

• Fixed internal contract spawn chances for Forever Cruise

• Fixed the Timeline event for megastructures only firing for Behemoth empires

• Fixed GetPlanetMoon returning a capitalized version of Planet as well as not returning moon when it should

• The Doomsday Arkship modifier now speeds up decisions, not buildings

• Fixed some Patron callings and deeds that were inappropriate for Nomadic Empires showing up.

• Fixed the tooltips for some Patron accords not showing the correct tooltips for gestalt empires.

• Fixed the tooltips for when an Arkship couldn't perform an action being confusing in some cases.

• Blocked Shroud-Forged from Embarking.

• You can no longer distribute Zro or Astral Threads during the Psionic Ascension situation if you run out of Zro or Astral Threads.

• Astral Scars spawned during the Psionic Ascension situation are now revealed to Nomadic Empires.

• Fixed an unlocalized tooltip for cloaking detection.

• Fixed some backup clone effects checking for the incorrect tradition.

• Arkship Preparation for the Doomsday origin now correctly reduces the time to embark.

• Polish and Russian loc fix

• Added a fallback if the Cyberization situation gets stuck with less than 100 pops to cyberize

• A firing Stellar Cannon no longer blocks interaction with planets and construction in other star systems.

• Arkships can now research the special project in Crystal Manufactory

• The Breach the Shroud situation now recognizes all types of Psi Corps buildings

• Unit Solace now correctly has the Synthetic trait

• Players without the Nomads DLC can again create Nomadic empires in multiplayer when the host owns the DLC.

• Fixed Arkship afterburners not upgrading to tier 2 when Advanced Afterburners is researched.

• Automated fleets no longer drop out of automation after evading hostiles.

• Fixed Stingers and the Devastator Mount not obeying the listed firing arcs for their weapons in some cases.

• Fixed civic-granted starting buildings not being added on Sacred Path Nomad Arkships (Experimentation Chambers, Sanctuary of Repose, Astrometeorology Observatory, Sacrificial Temple)

• Fixed Experimentation Chambers not being added on Hive/Machine Nomad Arkship starts

• Fixed deep-scan Resource Cache toast displaying incorrectly

• Fixed Forever Cruise empires incorrectly receiving Luxury Residences on game start

• Event generated Nomad empires will no longer get an asteroid

• Fixed Arkship move button incorrectly disabled

• The Abandon Contract button now warns about the consequences in its tooltip.

• Fixed duplicate colony names in the diplomacy tooltip after a nomad empire settles.

• Fixed a Special Project icon that could appear underneath the star in certain situations.

• Fixed starbase module and building limits showing as 0 in link tooltips.

• Timed project alerts no longer show projects from option groups you did not select.

• Fixed a duplicate scope name in deposit-related event tooltips.

• Fixed accepted contracts showing "Available Until: 0" in the issuer's tooltip.

• Fixed the outliner planet tooltip incorrectly reading "Carried by".

• Improved unhelpful modifier tooltip labels on Arkships.

• The anomaly "The Imitator" can no longer appear twice.

• The Stellar Cannon no longer removes portals when it fires.

• Fixed situation approaches not working after a repeating situation completed a cycle.

• Fixed welding bots facing the wrong way while constructing a megastructure.

• Harvesting modifiers for Civilian Arkships are now working correctly.

• Fixed some resource mining technologies being blocked for Nomadic empires.

• Fixed issues in which settled empires that Embarked could retain starbases and borders. Clarified the tooltip for Waystation conversion in English.

• Expulsions wars will no longer move stations nomads are not allowed to build before reverting their ownership

• Fixed Governor modifiers not applying.

• Nomad Raids now properly transfer waystations on status quo's in both directions

• Maintenance Optimization Tradition now grants Amenities bonuses for Calculator Jobs and the Hive equivalent.

• Changed icon for "Resources Stolen" alert notification to make it more noticeable after successfully plundering a planet.

• Operational Reserves tooltip now mentions the 1-3 scaling of energy/minerals to operational reserves

• Fixed numerous modifiers (such as the Stability from Bureaucrats granted by Byzantine Bureaucracy) not granting their modifiers to Arkships. Note to modders: Any scripted modifier needs to be updated to work on colonies rather than planets.

AI​

• AI will no longer accept unreachable contracts and will abandon contracts that become unreachable.

• Fixed AI empires not properly using Deep Sleep mechanics.

• Fixed nomadic AI empires not merging their armies into a single transport fleet.

• Fixed AI not selecting hostile, domineering, threatened or imperious attitudes if either country is nomadic.

• Fixed AI counting their existing armies twice when calculating how many armies to build.

UI/UX​

• Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration, Stargazers, and Exploration Protocols are now marked as a Challenging Civic on the empire creation screen.

• Ship automation buttons are now disabled, with an explanatory tooltip, for ships that cannot use Hyperlane travel.

• The diplomacy window dynamically resizes width as you move between options

• Selection box remains in the correct section after building a System or Spinal Mount

• Improved concept tooltips for starbase building and module unlocks.

• Fix waystation stockpile max capacity rounded to thousands

• Removed a duplicate Ascension Perks header in the perk picker.

• The starbase module list now keeps its scroll position when advancing through slots.

• Fixed the Situation Log selection jumping back to the first entry when scrolling.

• Fixed the position of the remove-contract button.

• Waystation UI now shows income to two decimal places.

• Waystations that are collecting excessive resources now have more room to display their icons in the system map.

Performance​

• Improved performance of the empire creation UI.

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

Stability​

• Fixed a crash on the start of the game loaded from an old save file.

• Fixed a SHELD_HEALTH OOS on hotjoin

• Country Modifiers OOS fixed due to badly parallelized navy coverage calculations

• to reduce the amount of OOS at resync, the host will now also reload the save during a resync

Audio​

• Stellaris Complete Soundtrack updated with Nomads tracks and album artwork.

• Correct sound now plays when arkships are attacked.

Modding​

• Added `category_limit_fail_text` to scripted actions.

• Added a `context_menu_ordering` (distance/weight) field for scripted actions to control target ordering when issued on a whole system.

• Added a per-ship-class shield multiplier modifier (e.g. `corvette_shield_mult`), matching the existing per-class health and armor multipliers.

• Added collected_colony_resources allowing starbase modules to steal or clone resources from colonies in the same system.

• Added AI_HOSTILE_FLEET_DISTANCE define.

More is in progress, and you may yet add to our list by letting us know your thoughts. Thank you for playing,

Hello Stellaris Community! We have just released the Stellaris 4.4.4 "Pegasus" patch to Open Beta. This patch addresses some of the balance and QoL feedback we've received since Nomads' release, as well as a host of bug fixes, and stability improvements. We plan on releasing 4.4.4 sometime next week, but in the interest of getting fixes to you as fast as possible, we're putting it up as an Open Beta today. Feedback-wise, we're most interested in feedback on multiplayer stability. We've been getting anecdotal reports that multiplayer stability is much improved, however we've also been getting some mixed signals on that front (eg. isolated reports of OOSes still persisting). For those of you interested in offering feedback on this latest version, please play in multiplayer and make bug reports for any OOSes you experience. If you're wondering what is required for a help OOS Bug Report, we have a How to report multiplayer desyncs guide. Please note: This is an opt-in Open Beta. In order to opt-in: (On Steam) Right Click Stellaris, go to Properties, click the Betas tab, and choose "stellaris_test" from the list of branches. Without further ado, onto the patch notes (these are unchanged from the patch notes posted to the forums earlier today in the Dev Diary):

4.4.4 ‘Pegasus’ Open Beta Release Notes

Feature

• The Baol Life Seeding decision can now be enacted on artificial worlds and structures, and grants a unique deposit carrying over some of the bonus of a Gaia world

Improvement

• AI will now consider abandoning a contract after 20 years have passed since they have accepted it.

• Idle Arkships and Logistic ships will notify the player about having completed the waystation/wayline stockpile collection.

• Added Logistics Hub indicator in the galaxy map.

• Arkship and Logistic harvest and strip mine orders issued on a whole solar system now target higher-value planets first instead of simply the nearest.

• Automated science ships that temporarily run out of reachable tasks now stay automated and resume when new work appears, instead of cancelling automation.

• Arkship random names in empire creation now use namelists for ships, not planets.

• Fleets will continue repairing and upgrading while following the moving arkship within the system.

• Fleets will continue following the arkship after having completed its upgrades.

• Improved the randomization of nomadic empires in galaxy generation, so they no longer take up the bulk of the advanced AI empire slots.

• Following ships will start charging its FTL drive without waiting for the target to complete its hyperlane jump.

• Becoming nomadic now embarks assault armies on the planet instead of destroying them.

Balance

• Further reduced the effects that higher difficulties have on Forever Cruise progress.

• Deep Sleep civics can no longer be combined with the Synthetic Fertility origin to avoid breaking their starting situation and the identity repository.

• Rebalanced Arkship habitability from species traits.

• Arkship colonies gain +40% habitability from their planet class.

• Arkship Living Space Module grants habitability and costs Exotic Gases.

• Reduced the size bonus damage from the Vanguard and Knight Paladin subclasses.

• Adjusted the starting conditions of Forever Cruise and upkeep of Passengers to not start you in massive deficits.

• Made the Forever Cruise center situation stage longer

• Added a Passenger Satisfaction penalty for abandoning Forever Cruise contracts

• The Doomsday modifier you get for successfully embarking now grants +60% habitability

• Increased offspring ship limits.

• Nomad strategic-resource harvesting reworked. Researching a resource's mining technology now grants a +50% harvesting yield for that resource (Volatile Motes, Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals, Living Metal), replacing the previous penalty for lacking the technology. This means that the bonus from the technology now applies to resources inherent to the planet class instead of only those from deposits.

• Tribute Vault and Pirate Hideout waystation modules now add their resources to the waystation's stockpile.

Bugfix

• Literally unplayable typo fixed in "Agree to Disagree" perk tooltip.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

• Paladin ships can no longer cloak, as their UI does not support it.

• Fixed some Star Seekers checks only checking for the regular version of the civic.

• Nomad-exclusive technologies are now hidden if you decide to settle, and re-revealed if you then decide to embark and become nomadic again.

• fixed error logged when loading a save that contains popup informing about finish a tech research

• The gas giant created by the Primal Calling origin now starts surveyed.

• Corrected that mineral_insight_nomad did not provide job efficiency for astro-harvesting jobs.

• The Waystation Research Module now establishes communications with pre-FTL civilizations in its system.

• Planet class modifiers now apply to Arkship (ship-carried) colonies.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Total Wars between Nomads now properly move arkships between owners

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some modded ui cases.

• Fixed the Planet Modifier for doomsday empires embarking not being applied to their arkship.

• Fixed the Safe Haven modifier for embarking as a doomsday empire not having an icon.

• Allowed Beastports for non-Beastmaster empires if you have tech_alien_cloning..

• Fleets will no longer get stuck not being able to jump if the target their are following is currently moving.

• In "Decipher Strange Signal", the nomadic empire needs to be in the system owner's empire to make contact

• Fixed Nomadic empires not being able to enable L-Gates in some cases.

• Arkships no longer benefit twice from waystation network (wayline) modifiers.

• The Utility Deck specialization now correctly supports industrial buildings.

• Fixed Specific Cetana events being broken for Nomads

• Fixed delayed starbase spawn upon settling as Nomads

• Fixed Cetana's Databank Project not showing up under Ongoing Crises

• Fixed the Clone Army dig site spawn event localisation pointing towards an incorrect planet

• Fixed an edge case where it was possible to dismiss the Eternal Chorus scientist before the end of the event chain

• Fixed an instance of the Assist Colony special project not spawning properly upon accepting the contract

• Fixed the Sable Pilot trait icon being empty

• Fixed crash that could happen when federation members were destroyed while a proposal was still being voted

• "Cetana: Weak Links" entry stays inside the borders of the Situation Log window.

• Fixed 2 resort world specializations deleting themselves after being build

• Changing the situation approach will now update the effect list faster - some edge cases used to delay the changes in the effects for a few in game days.

• Abandoning an internal contract no longer sends an issuer toast

• The on_cancel effect only fires once for internal contracts

• Massively increased the likelihood that the Drums of War chains starts for Heirs of the Khan empires near the mid game year.

• Ignore border restrictions for nomadic countries in uplift-species special projects

• Fixed Recall paladin ability to work for nomad players

• Fixed Stellar Ignition Contract being impossible to complete

• Take the initiative projects will now abort if they are no longer needed.

• Fixed Wanderlust event chain re-appearing in the situation log

• The Doomsday event to unlock Embarking once again unlocks embarking.

• Lowered the Forever Cruise situation speed change based on difficulty

• Enabled the Sacred Path event chain to remain in the Situation Log after completing all Sacred Sites, so players can still find them on the galaxy map.

• Color change in "System Warmth Detected" event window

• Fixed internal contract spawn chances for Forever Cruise

• Fixed the Timeline event for megastructures only firing for Behemoth empires

• Fixed GetPlanetMoon returning a capitalized version of Planet as well as not returning moon when it should

• The Doomsday Arkship modifier now speeds up decisions, not buildings

• Fixed some Patron callings and deeds that were inappropriate for Nomadic Empires showing up.

• Fixed the tooltips for some Patron accords not showing the correct tooltips for gestalt empires.

• Fixed the tooltips for when an Arkship couldn't perform an action being confusing in some cases.

• Blocked Shroud-Forged from Embarking.

• You can no longer distribute Zro or Astral Threads during the Psionic Ascension situation if you run out of Zro or Astral Threads.

• Astral Scars spawned during the Psionic Ascension situation are now revealed to Nomadic Empires.

• Fixed an unlocalized tooltip for cloaking detection.

• Fixed some backup clone effects checking for the incorrect tradition.

• Arkship Preparation for the Doomsday origin now correctly reduces the time to embark.

• Polish and Russian loc fix

• Added a fallback if the Cyberization situation gets stuck with less than 100 pops to cyberize

• A firing Stellar Cannon no longer blocks interaction with planets and construction in other star systems.

• Arkships can now research the special project in Crystal Manufactory

• The Breach the Shroud situation now recognizes all types of Psi Corps buildings

• Unit Solace now correctly has the Synthetic trait

• Players without the Nomads DLC can again create Nomadic empires in multiplayer when the host owns the DLC.

• Fixed Arkship afterburners not upgrading to tier 2 when Advanced Afterburners is researched.

• Automated fleets no longer drop out of automation after evading hostiles.

• Fixed Stingers and the Devastator Mount not obeying the listed firing arcs for their weapons in some cases.

• Fixed civic-granted starting buildings not being added on Sacred Path Nomad Arkships (Experimentation Chambers, Sanctuary of Repose, Astrometeorology Observatory, Sacrificial Temple)

• Fixed Experimentation Chambers not being added on Hive/Machine Nomad Arkship starts

• Fixed deep-scan Resource Cache toast displaying incorrectly

• Fixed Forever Cruise empires incorrectly receiving Luxury Residences on game start

• Event generated Nomad empires will no longer get an asteroid

• Fixed Arkship move button incorrectly disabled

• The Abandon Contract button now warns about the consequences in its tooltip.

• Fixed duplicate colony names in the diplomacy tooltip after a nomad empire settles.

• Fixed a Special Project icon that could appear underneath the star in certain situations.

• Fixed starbase module and building limits showing as 0 in link tooltips.

• Timed project alerts no longer show projects from option groups you did not select.

• Fixed a duplicate scope name in deposit-related event tooltips.

• Fixed accepted contracts showing "Available Until: 0" in the issuer's tooltip.

• Fixed the outliner planet tooltip incorrectly reading "Carried by".

• Improved unhelpful modifier tooltip labels on Arkships.

• The anomaly "The Imitator" can no longer appear twice.

• The Stellar Cannon no longer removes portals when it fires.

• Fixed situation approaches not working after a repeating situation completed a cycle.

• Fixed welding bots facing the wrong way while constructing a megastructure.

• Harvesting modifiers for Civilian Arkships are now working correctly.

• Fixed some resource mining technologies being blocked for Nomadic empires.

• Fixed issues in which settled empires that Embarked could retain starbases and borders. Clarified the tooltip for Waystation conversion in English.

• Expulsions wars will no longer move stations nomads are not allowed to build before reverting their ownership

• Fixed Governor modifiers not applying.

• Nomad Raids now properly transfer waystations on status quo's in both directions

• Maintenance Optimization Tradition now grants Amenities bonuses for Calculator Jobs and the Hive equivalent.

• Changed icon for "Resources Stolen" alert notification to make it more noticeable after successfully plundering a planet.

• Operational Reserves tooltip now mentions the 1-3 scaling of energy/minerals to operational reserves

• Fixed numerous modifiers (such as the Stability from Bureaucrats granted by Byzantine Bureaucracy) not granting their modifiers to Arkships. Note to modders: Any scripted modifier needs to be updated to work on colonies rather than planets.

AI

• AI will no longer accept unreachable contracts and will abandon contracts that become unreachable.

• Fixed AI empires not properly using Deep Sleep mechanics.

• Fixed nomadic AI empires not merging their armies into a single transport fleet.

• Fixed AI not selecting hostile, domineering, threatened or imperious attitudes if either country is nomadic.

• Fixed AI counting their existing armies twice when calculating how many armies to build.

UI/UX

• Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration, Stargazers, and Exploration Protocols are now marked as a Challenging Civic on the empire creation screen.

• Ship automation buttons are now disabled, with an explanatory tooltip, for ships that cannot use Hyperlane travel.

• The diplomacy window dynamically resizes width as you move between options

• Selection box remains in the correct section after building a System or Spinal Mount

• Improved concept tooltips for starbase building and module unlocks.

• Fix waystation stockpile max capacity rounded to thousands

• Removed a duplicate Ascension Perks header in the perk picker.

• The starbase module list now keeps its scroll position when advancing through slots.

• Fixed the Situation Log selection jumping back to the first entry when scrolling.

• Fixed the position of the remove-contract button.

• Waystation UI now shows income to two decimal places.

• Waystations that are collecting excessive resources now have more room to display their icons in the system map.

Performance

• Improved performance of the empire creation UI.

Stability

• Fixed a crash on the start of the game loaded from an old save file.

• Fixed a SHELD_HEALTH OOS on hotjoin

• Country Modifiers OOS fixed due to badly parallelized navy coverage calculations

• to reduce the amount of OOS at resync, the host will now also reload the save during a resync

Audio

• Stellaris Complete Soundtrack updated with Nomads tracks and album artwork.

• Correct sound now plays when arkships are attacked.

Modding

• Added `category_limit_fail_text` to scripted actions.

• Added a `context_menu_ordering` (distance/weight) field for scripted actions to control target ordering when issued on a whole system.

• Added a per-ship-class shield multiplier modifier (e.g. `corvette_shield_mult`), matching the existing per-class health and armor multipliers.

• Added collected_colony_resources allowing starbase modules to steal or clone resources from colonies in the same system.

• Added AI_HOSTILE_FLEET_DISTANCE define.

Save compatibility is not guaranteed between versions and while we are not expecting issues from older save games and this new version, it is always a good practice to back up your save file before loading into a new version.

by Eladrin

Greetings, travellers!

The Stellaris 4.4.1 ‘Pegasus’ update and Nomads released this Monday.

SimasTV created a tutorial on the basics.​

Today we’re going to look at the first few days, discuss a few common comments, and explain where we’re going next.

The First Days and the 4.4.2 and 4.4.3 Hotfixes

Very quickly we saw a number of crash reports coming in. Most of these came down to an issue at low resolutions (x800 or lower), which truncated the Waystation UI. This led to a crash when the game attempted to update the Wayline information that is displayed in the upper section that was no longer there. We put it up as an Open Beta on Monday, and you players found some issues with the planned Hotfix, such as Precursor selection disappearing from Galaxy Generation, so that’s a +1 for Open Betas. The 4.4.2 Hotfix released Tuesday afternoon, with the following fixes:

4.4.2 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes

Balance:

• Reduced the rate of the Forever Cruise situation speed on all difficulties.

• Significantly reduced the amount that the situation increases based on game difficulty. (These are further reduced from last night’s Open Beta release.)

• Doubled the grace period after completing a crew or passenger contract - it will now pause progress in the passenger satisfaction situation for 24 months.

• More comprehensive changes will be coming in this weekend's Open Beta for the patch planned for next week.

Bugfix:

• The Defenders of the Galaxy achievement should now be completable

• \ Fix overlapping and missing items in single player game setup

Stability:

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some cases.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the animated main menu background from the in-game settings screen.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Fix crashing on 800p and lower resolutions when clicking on Waystations.

• Fix combat crash when calculating ship design states (from required component arrays having null-object placeholders that defaulted to the “weapon” type)

• Fix crash when escaping combat as an enemy is destroyed

• Fix crash in spawn_random_anomaly when orbital fleet has no ships

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering an empire's ethics tooltips, including after that empire was destroyed.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering ethics tooltips in the empire setup screen.

• Fixed a potential crash when opponents were deleted in mid-combat

The Stability list included fixes to over 90% of the crashes reported in the first 24 hours, and we made a few changes to the difficulty of the Forever Cruise situation speed on higher difficulties - there’s more coming next week though. The 4.4.3 hotfix was a small one on Wednesday to target a few especially confusing issues.

4.4.3 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes Bugfix:

• The Void Reavers civic no longer requires both First Contact and Nomads

• Corrected the Trust and Opinion thresholds required to propose a Waystation Pact.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

Decisions We Made When Designing Nomads

Operation Reserves are something that it seems we could have had more clarity about. As mentioned in Dev Diary #421, Operational Reserves were introduced as a solution to balance consumption creating a desire to move about (to harvest and collect) and having an angry red number in your resources bar that the last ten years have trained us all to interpret as “EMERGENCY! ACT NOW! YOUR ECONOMY IS IN SHAMBLES! EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE!” - but this is intended to be the normal state. Merging Energy and Minerals into a single more fungible resource gave us a way to represent the continuous drain of resources while providing several different ways to mitigate it, while hopefully making it not feel the same as a deficit situation in a normal empire. (This also gave us the tech we needed to explore a nice niche for a Nanotech redesign that the Custodians will be looking at during the summer.)

Some people have commented about the difficulty in getting detailed information about the mineral and energy expenditures - it’s a bit obfuscated, but we intended for the Operational Reserves to be more of a black box where you shouldn’t need to care about the exact state of mineral or energy. You shouldn’t be using it for much - construction generally requires more advanced or strategic resources - except for fishing for the Galatron and feeding Lithoids. But since Energy and Minerals are mutually exchangeable, the answer should always be “get more of either”.

There have been many comments about Arkship Skins and Bio-Arkships. The Arkships are the most complicated ships we’ve ever created, with three different specializations, each with three tiers and a number of other customization options (such as the spinal mounts).

While we would have loved to include all of them, if we made them to the same detail level of the Arkships we did create, it’d have required a total of 20 different shipsets x 3 Arkship types x 3 tiers = 180 ships - an impossible scope. While we could have cut the different tiers, reducing the count to 60, that’s still too much. Cutting the three different types as well could have dropped it to 20 - but we felt that the Civilian vs. Military vs. Scientific choices and the multiple tiers of Arkship were a more interesting use of the resources, and we feel that just going with textural changes without form changes wouldn’t have been satisfying.

If at some point in the future we do add a Bio-Arkship, I’d likely want to make it a fourth category with its own mechanics rather than being a copy of one of the other three, especially since we decided to permit bioship empires to use the standard Arkship variants. We would likely permit the reverse as well - empires that use mechanical ships would likely still be allowed to use the Bio variant of the Arkship if we went this direction.

The Very Next Step: 4.4.4 Open Beta

We have a larger patch planned for early next week with a few fixes, which we will be pushing to the stellaris_test Open Beta branch today.

Here are the Open Beta release notes:

4.4.4 ‘Flappy Horse’ Open Beta Release Notes Feature

• The Baol Life Seeding decision can now be enacted on artificial worlds and structures, and grants a unique deposit carrying over some of the bonus of a Gaia world

Improvement

• AI will now consider abandoning a contract after 20 years have passed since they have accepted it.

• Idle Arkships and Logistic ships will notify the player about having completed the waystation/wayline stockpile collection.

• Added Logistics Hub indicator in the galaxy map.

• Arkship and Logistic harvest and strip mine orders issued on a whole solar system now target higher-value planets first instead of simply the nearest.

• Automated science ships that temporarily run out of reachable tasks now stay automated and resume when new work appears, instead of cancelling automation.

• Arkship random names in empire creation now use namelists for ships, not planets.

• Fleets will continue repairing and upgrading while following the moving arkship within the system.

• Fleets will continue following the arkship after having completed its upgrades.

• Improved the randomization of nomadic empires in galaxy generation, so they no longer take up the bulk of the advanced AI empire slots.

• Following ships will start charging its FTL drive without waiting for the target to complete its hyperlane jump.

• Becoming nomadic now embarks assault armies on the planet instead of destroying them.

Balance

• Further reduced the effects that higher difficulties have on Forever Cruise progress.

• Deep Sleep civics can no longer be combined with the Synthetic Fertility origin to avoid breaking their starting situation and the identity repository.

• Rebalanced Arkship habitability from species traits.

• Arkship colonies gain +40% habitability from their planet class.

• Arkship Living Space Module grants habitability and costs Exotic Gases.

• Reduced the size bonus damage from the Vanguard and Knight Paladin subclasses.

• Adjusted the starting conditions of Forever Cruise and upkeep of Passengers to not start you in massive deficits.

• Made the Forever Cruise center situation stage longer

• Added a Passenger Satisfaction penalty for abandoning Forever Cruise contracts

• The Doomsday modifier you get for successfully embarking now grants +60% habitability

• Increased offspring ship limits.

• Nomad strategic-resource harvesting reworked. Researching a resource's mining technology now grants a +50% harvesting yield for that resource (Volatile Motes, Exotic Gases, Rare Crystals, Living Metal), replacing the previous penalty for lacking the technology. This means that the bonus from the technology now applies to resources inherent to the planet class instead of only those from deposits.

• Tribute Vault and Pirate Hideout waystation modules now add their resources to the waystation's stockpile.

Bugfix

• Literally unplayable typo fixed in "Agree to Disagree" perk tooltip.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

• Paladin ships can no longer cloak, as their UI does not support it.

• Fixed some Star Seekers checks only checking for the regular version of the civic.

• Nomad-exclusive technologies are now hidden if you decide to settle, and re-revealed if you then decide to embark and become nomadic again.

• fixed error logged when loading a save that contains popup informing about finish a tech research

• The gas giant created by the Primal Calling origin now starts surveyed.

• Corrected that mineral_insight_nomad did not provide job efficiency for astro-harvesting jobs.

• The Waystation Research Module now establishes communications with pre-FTL civilizations in its system.

• Planet class modifiers now apply to Arkship (ship-carried) colonies.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Total Wars between Nomads now properly move arkships between owners

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some modded ui cases.

• Fixed the Planet Modifier for doomsday empires embarking not being applied to their arkship.

• Fixed the Safe Haven modifier for embarking as a doomsday empire not having an icon.

• Allowed Beastports for non-Beastmaster empires if you have tech_alien_cloning..

• Fleets will no longer get stuck not being able to jump if the target their are following is currently moving.

• In "Decipher Strange Signal", the nomadic empire needs to be in the system owner's empire to make contact

• Fixed Nomadic empires not being able to enable L-Gates in some cases.

• Arkships no longer benefit twice from waystation network (wayline) modifiers.

• The Utility Deck specialization now correctly supports industrial buildings.

• Fixed Specific Cetana events being broken for Nomads

• Fixed delayed starbase spawn upon settling as Nomads

• Fixed Cetana's Databank Project not showing up under Ongoing Crises

• Fixed the Clone Army dig site spawn event localisation pointing towards an incorrect planet

• Fixed an edge case where it was possible to dismiss the Eternal Chorus scientist before the end of the event chain

• Fixed an instance of the Assist Colony special project not spawning properly upon accepting the contract

• Fixed the Sable Pilot trait icon being empty

• Fixed crash that could happen when federation members were destroyed while a proposal was still being voted

• "Cetana: Weak Links" entry stays inside the borders of the Situation Log window.

• Fixed 2 resort world specializations deleting themselves after being build

• Changing the situation approach will now update the effect list faster - some edge cases used to delay the changes in the effects for a few in game days.

• Abandoning an internal contract no longer sends an issuer toast

• The on_cancel effect only fires once for internal contracts

• Massively increased the likelihood that the Drums of War chains starts for Heirs of the Khan empires near the mid game year.

• Ignore border restrictions for nomadic countries in uplift-species special projects

• Fixed Recall paladin ability to work for nomad players

• Fixed Stellar Ignition Contract being impossible to complete

• Take the initiative projects will now abort if they are no longer needed.

• Fixed Wanderlust event chain re-appearing in the situation log

• The Doomsday event to unlock Embarking once again unlocks embarking.

• Lowered the Forever Cruise situation speed change based on difficulty

• Enabled the Sacred Path event chain to remain in the Situation Log after completing all Sacred Sites, so players can still find them on the galaxy map.

• Color change in "System Warmth Detected" event window

• Fixed internal contract spawn chances for Forever Cruise

• Fixed the Timeline event for megastructures only firing for Behemoth empires

• Fixed GetPlanetMoon returning a capitalized version of Planet as well as not returning moon when it should

• The Doomsday Arkship modifier now speeds up decisions, not buildings

• Fixed some Patron callings and deeds that were inappropriate for Nomadic Empires showing up.

• Fixed the tooltips for some Patron accords not showing the correct tooltips for gestalt empires.

• Fixed the tooltips for when an Arkship couldn't perform an action being confusing in some cases.

• Blocked Shroud-Forged from Embarking.

• You can no longer distribute Zro or Astral Threads during the Psionic Ascension situation if you run out of Zro or Astral Threads.

• Astral Scars spawned during the Psionic Ascension situation are now revealed to Nomadic Empires.

• Fixed an unlocalized tooltip for cloaking detection.

• Fixed some backup clone effects checking for the incorrect tradition.

• Arkship Preparation for the Doomsday origin now correctly reduces the time to embark.

• Polish and Russian loc fix

• Added a fallback if the Cyberization situation gets stuck with less than 100 pops to cyberize

• A firing Stellar Cannon no longer blocks interaction with planets and construction in other star systems.

• Arkships can now research the special project in Crystal Manufactory

• The Breach the Shroud situation now recognizes all types of Psi Corps buildings

• Unit Solace now correctly has the Synthetic trait

• Players without the Nomads DLC can again create Nomadic empires in multiplayer when the host owns the DLC.

• Fixed Arkship afterburners not upgrading to tier 2 when Advanced Afterburners is researched.

• Automated fleets no longer drop out of automation after evading hostiles.

• Fixed Stingers and the Devastator Mount not obeying the listed firing arcs for their weapons in some cases.

• Fixed civic-granted starting buildings not being added on Sacred Path Nomad Arkships (Experimentation Chambers, Sanctuary of Repose, Astrometeorology Observatory, Sacrificial Temple)

• Fixed Experimentation Chambers not being added on Hive/Machine Nomad Arkship starts

• Fixed deep-scan Resource Cache toast displaying incorrectly

• Fixed Forever Cruise empires incorrectly receiving Luxury Residences on game start

• Event generated Nomad empires will no longer get an asteroid

• Fixed Arkship move button incorrectly disabled

• The Abandon Contract button now warns about the consequences in its tooltip.

• Fixed duplicate colony names in the diplomacy tooltip after a nomad empire settles.

• Fixed a Special Project icon that could appear underneath the star in certain situations.

• Fixed starbase module and building limits showing as 0 in link tooltips.

• Timed project alerts no longer show projects from option groups you did not select.

• Fixed a duplicate scope name in deposit-related event tooltips.

• Fixed accepted contracts showing "Available Until: 0" in the issuer's tooltip.

• Fixed the outliner planet tooltip incorrectly reading "Carried by".

• Improved unhelpful modifier tooltip labels on Arkships.

• The anomaly "The Imitator" can no longer appear twice.

• The Stellar Cannon no longer removes portals when it fires.

• Fixed situation approaches not working after a repeating situation completed a cycle.

• Fixed welding bots facing the wrong way while constructing a megastructure.

• Harvesting modifiers for Civilian Arkships are now working correctly.

• Fixed some resource mining technologies being blocked for Nomadic empires.

• Fixed issues in which settled empires that Embarked could retain starbases and borders. Clarified the tooltip for Waystation conversion in English.

• Expulsions wars will no longer move stations nomads are not allowed to build before reverting their ownership

• Fixed Governor modifiers not applying.

• Nomad Raids now properly transfer waystations on status quo's in both directions

• Maintenance Optimization Tradition now grants Amenities bonuses for Calculator Jobs and the Hive equivalent.

• Changed icon for "Resources Stolen" alert notification to make it more noticeable after successfully plundering a planet.

• Operational Reserves tooltip now mentions the 1-3 scaling of energy/minerals to operational reserves

• Fixed numerous modifiers (such as the Stability from Bureaucrats granted by Byzantine Bureaucracy) not granting their modifiers to Arkships. Note to modders: Any scripted modifier needs to be updated to work on colonies rather than planets.

AI

• AI will no longer accept unreachable contracts and will abandon contracts that become unreachable.

• Fixed AI empires not properly using Deep Sleep mechanics.

• Fixed nomadic AI empires not merging their armies into a single transport fleet.

• Fixed AI not selecting hostile, domineering, threatened or imperious attitudes if either country is nomadic.

• Fixed AI counting their existing armies twice when calculating how many armies to build.

UI/UX

• Eager Explorers, Privatized Exploration, Stargazers, and Exploration Protocols are now marked as a Challenging Civic on the empire creation screen.

• Ship automation buttons are now disabled, with an explanatory tooltip, for ships that cannot use Hyperlane travel.

• The diplomacy window dynamically resizes width as you move between options

• Selection box remains in the correct section after building a System or Spinal Mount

• Improved concept tooltips for starbase building and module unlocks.

• Fix waystation stockpile max capacity rounded to thousands

• Removed a duplicate Ascension Perks header in the perk picker.

• The starbase module list now keeps its scroll position when advancing through slots.

• Fixed the Situation Log selection jumping back to the first entry when scrolling.

• Fixed the position of the remove-contract button.

• Waystation UI now shows income to two decimal places.

• Waystations that are collecting excessive resources now have more room to display their icons in the system map.

Performance

• Improved performance of the empire creation UI.

Stability

• Fixed a crash on the start of the game loaded from an old save file.

• Fixed a SHELD_HEALTH OOS on hotjoin

• Country Modifiers OOS fixed due to badly parallelized navy coverage calculations

• to reduce the amount of OOS at resync, the host will now also reload the save during a resync

Audio

• Stellaris Complete Soundtrack updated with Nomads tracks and album artwork.

• Correct sound now plays when arkships are attacked.

Modding

• Added `category_limit_fail_text` to scripted actions.

• Added a `context_menu_ordering` (distance/weight) field for scripted actions to control target ordering when issued on a whole system.

• Added a per-ship-class shield multiplier modifier (e.g. `corvette_shield_mult`), matching the existing per-class health and armor multipliers.

• Added collected_colony_resources allowing starbase modules to steal or clone resources from colonies in the same system.

• Added AI_HOSTILE_FLEET_DISTANCE define.

Let us know if you run into any issues!

Things for the Future

The 4.4 Nomads release adapted a large number of Origins to nomadic gameplay, but more is always better. Most of the list of disallowed Origins have technical reasons.

We plan on enabling more nomadic fantasies going forward. Storm Chasers and Knights of the Toxic God are on the shortlist, along with further investigation into Broken Shackles. We won’t make any promises at this time (Broken Shackles has been especially tricky, since the MSI flagship isn’t set up quite right to just be turned into an Arkship), but the Custodian team wants to enable as many as possible.

Some of these are likely to make it into this summer’s 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta.

Questions We Still Have

During the development of 4.4, the programming team spent a lot of time working on multiplayer stability. The data we’ve collected so far looks very promising regarding out-of-syncs, but we’d like to hear more from how it’s been going for you, even if it’s largely anecdotal.

We’re also eager to hear more about what you like and dislike about Nomadic gameplay, so we can adjust our plans for the 4.4.5 patch and 4.5.

Questions You Had

Last Thursday we held a Q&A on discord - here’s a transcript of the questions and answers.

Stellaris Nomads — Dev Q&A

azaken_mobito asked: How terrifying would a fleet of tier 3 military Arkships be?

Well, you can only have 1 per fleet. So not too bad ;) Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

neonakoro asked: what happens if everyone closes their borders to a nomadic empire and/or destroys their way stations?

Just closing borders won't stop Nomads from moving through, if everyone in the galaxy had declared war on the nomad to expulse them at the same time, than we move into a wonky situations where the nomad will likely be stuck for a while and they really should work on their PR Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

velhote1051 asked: How do you plan on supporting nomads in the future? Can we expect nem nomads content in future DLC and/or tweaks and changes from the custodian to nomads?

Future content should work with Nomads. Same as with MegaCorp when there is fun potential fantasies we add them! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

eps200 asked: Have you considered removing megastructure caps, balanced by having the modifier non stacking. That would make second ones less powerful and avoid us getting screwed out by the limits.

One of the things we're probably going to experiment with during this summer is changing Starbase Limits into a Structure Limit, which would also include changing the limits on kilostructures and possibly even megastructures. If our internal experiments go well, expect it to go into an Open Beta at some point for a while. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

fiji_oskar asked: does operational reserve has capacity limit

Yes, off the top of my head I think it's around 50k or thereabouts Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

ravana. asked: What's the status of the outliner allowing fleets to be reordered?

It has gone from never to unlikely. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

dskin asked: how effective is playing mp stellaris as a co-op between settled and nomad empires?

I had a lot of fun issuing a bunch of contracts for Cosmogone to do during one of the dev MPs. He buffed my colonies and did things for me, and we coexisted quite nicely together. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

lucaszorua asked: what are your thoughts on size-based traits? Like if you want a species to be mouse or elephant sized

I have been pitching the Big and Small species pack since my first day here! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

the_no0b asked: if the answer to the big question about life, the universe and the entire rest is "42", then what the hell was the question?

Ground combat rework when? Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

tabernak asked: Does genocidal biological hivemind consume all biomass from worlds and leaves an empty baren world ?

They kill all the pops, but they quite fully scour it. If you want to eat planets you will need to be lithoid. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

squishyfishy asked: any thoughts on abducting cool planetary features?

We actually did talk about that during development. I think Grunts wanted to steal the Eiffel Tower. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

fleppo99 asked: How will the new Democratic Interlink Cyborg Pop faction work if Cyborgs in that empire type have no Happiness, and factions no Approval Rating to work off of because of that? How is Faction Approval determined with this new faction?

The Interlink has no demands Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

hotcoffee_ asked: I love the new merch - any plans to make more plushies?

Yep I have seen two of them! Very soft. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

tabernak asked: For you, which ascension path is the funniest to play as a Nomads ? I personally think Virtuality can be hilarious being the biggest moving data center through the galaxy

Virtuality 100%. Though some of the psionic patrons are also hilarious. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

sandwich8 asked: are galactic nomads going to put back into the game, even if you own MegaCorp???

The original nomads from 1.0 do not come back with this DLC, they are replaced with actual empires instead of the old NPC ones Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

rynn11k asked: What are you most excited for for 4.5?

Hopefully massively decreasing the amount of technical debt in the script to make the plans for 4.6 and 2027 easier to achieve Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

squishyfishy asked: can nomads create a mercenary enclave in an owned system and remain the patron?

Yep it's tied to the waystation when a nomad creates them. Might be a hard time getting it back if it blows up tho Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: Can you still become ruler of the galactic imperium as a Nomad?

I don't see why we would block that 🤔 Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked: Can Arkships have alien zoos?

Yes, useful if you have a Nascent Stage Kindergarten. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

halfedead_harry asked: Do nomads act well as advanced subjects?

Nomadic empires cannot be (or have be an overlord to) the specialist subject types from Overlord. They were too planet-/system-based. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

dskin asked: are there conquering wargoals allowing you to take over waystations owned by other nomads

Yes Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked: Would leaders in control of Arkships be Captains, Admirals, or Grand Admirals you think?

Arkships have two leaders assigned to them, one to the colony (as the governor) and one to the ship. The ship leader can be either a Commander or a Scientist. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

the_no0b asked: Can a star be changed by the latest revealed spinal mount, then starforged by a Hpyerthermia empire, and then still be Dysonswarmed? Or blown up into a black hole?

Should just work, yes Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

cipher3250 asked: Did the devs have a chance to do an internal MP game during nomads dev? Did the devs who played nomads end up being more helpful or annoying to the rest of you dirtdwellers?

We have a weekly MP game that's typically 90-120 minutes long. It's incredibly useful for finding all of the crashes and out-of-sync issues that the community thankfully never sees. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: Can Forever Cruise be Individualist Machines? And with forever cruise, is it possible to... 'replace' the starting passengers? Say I want to accept passengers from all the strongest factions of the galaxy! Is it possible to offer out services as a cruise to other races and empires beyond our starting passengers?

Yep you can be robits! And yes you can add more passengers or crew as the game goes on. You can not really remove your starting passangers tho. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

jumblee asked: how possible is it to not use harvesting actions and still thrive as nomads (I want to be eco friendly)

Its sub-optimal, but its possible. You will most likely be sacrificing more of your districts for energy production than a harvesting nomad. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked: Will Arkships have their own Name lists? Will this update seemlessly inject new name lists without it counting as a mod or a modded game that messes with compatibility?

Civilian Arkships use the Colony Ship namelists, Scientific Arkships use the Science Ship namelists, Military Arkships use the Juggernaut namelists Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

alexiacew asked: Will nomad empires get colony events?

They'll get Arkship events. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

dskin asked: what gives warscore against nomadic empires?

Defeating their fleets, disabling their arkships, pretty much everything that would work for normal empires, except occupying starbases Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

azaken_mobito asked: Have you considered adding an Origin for Nomads that makes them explorers from another Galaxy?

You might want to pay attention to one of the scenarios being released later this year Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

the_no0b asked: were there any funny errors/bugs/explouts you ran into while developing this DLC?

YES! In fact, this one's even in our release build, so it's a Known Issue!

The galaxy is vast and full of riches. Space based deposits are more common than intended (almost every object in the galaxy has something on it!) but it’s pretty cool so this is probably going to turn into a galaxy generation slider.

It's really fun, so we're gonna keep it as a slider. Other funny bugs included when logging in or loading a save would immediately kill your empire, as we were partially through the colony carrier conversion. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director) lucaszorua asked: apologies I meant can you use subspace imaging without creating / discovering new hyperlanes. It sounds like subspace is more likely to find things rather than deep scan

Subspace Imaging has a less than 10% chance of discovering new hyperlanes or wormholes when used and can only be used once per system. I wouldn't worry too much. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: Can Nomadic Empires create Nomadic Vassals? The settled and embarked mechanics showed that Nomads could create settled vassals (or become settled while all their other arkships become vassals) but is it possible for a Nomad to remain Nomadic while creating other nomadic vassals?

Nomads can have other nomadic vassals, yes Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

rafi69 asked: Can one of our colony embark on an arkship while at war, to escape it and let our new vassal deal with it?

You can escape sure, however you are still the country who was in that war :P Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

dskin asked: are there events where destroyed empires can evacuate onto arkships, such as escaping from a genocidal empire if they have sufficient pop numbers or resources?

Becoming nomadic has to be done before you lose the game, though of course if you die you could then continue as any empire so you might find a suitable Nomadic empire somewhere in the galaxy. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

lavraleksej asked: how painfull will porting a mod relying on planet flags and empire borders be?

Depending on how involved the mod is it might just be a case of replacing `colony_` with `carrier_`, alternatively it might be several days of work. Depends on the mod really. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

cipher3250 asked: I probably missed this - how do nomads handle archeology and rifts?

they can always do it outside of borders, and if they get archivisim they can do it inside of borders. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked: How many puns were added in Nomads? Was it enough, or far too little?

never enough. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

kayla_colon3 asked: do star types affect your arkship? for example more radiant stars increase energy output

Nah, but see the new Photoadaptive trait! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-423-stellar-cannon-civics-and-the-hyacinth-found.1926410/Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

big_fish213 asked: is there a setting to choose how many empires will appear as nomads vs traditional empires? or is it just a random chance that an empire may generate as nomads?

We have a slider for how many nomadic empires can appear in the galaxy. Nomadic empires can also randomly be selected to be Advanced Start empires, meaning they start with up to 3 arkships Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

hotcoffee_ asked: In your opinion what is the best looking shipset?

A tie between the Spinovores from BioGenesis, the Mindwardens from Shadows of the Shroud, the \ from Willpower, and the \ from \ (at least the concept art for it). Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

gorehuchi asked: Have you all ever considered allowing transport fleets to damage starbases or large ships with "boarding" actions? This question is spurred by the fact arc ships can't be invaded.

It is a surprisingly common topic in our design meetings but we have no current plans for this. Just note that this is a far bigger change than it would seem and so not something we would want to implement casually. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

gorehuchi asked: Can a nomadic empire have Obsessional Directive? I would like to field a fleet of paperclip hungry von Neumann probes.

Yes. Make the galaxy a consumer good Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

mon.archie asked: Could you describe what the Wanderlust AP does in a little more detail?

Go to cool places and be rewarded! You start out with some powerful modifiers and get more based on what systems you visit. See the curators for what might be out there. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

captainkorpie asked: How will Void Dwellers function as a nomadic empire? will that even be compatible?

Void Dwellers are not compatible with Nomads. They're all Void Dwellers. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

eps200 asked: \

I can't immediately think of a reason why this wouldn't be possible to mod in. Answered by: pthooie (Programmer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: What origins can and cannot be Nomadic? Beyond some obvious examples like Wilderness. Progenitor Hives? Mind Wardens? Under One Rule? Scion? Cybernetic Creed? Synthetic Fertility? Shroud Forged? Here Be Dragons?

We listed these in the latest dev diary! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-424-nomads-and-4-4-pegasus-preliminary-release-notes.1927421/Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked: What is each of your favorite parts of this new DLC for all the panelists?

All the new ways you can play. It almost feels like we doubled the amount of combinations and playstyles. Which is really cool! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked: Can we have some murder mystery events happen within our empires sometimes for various potential outcomes and for just the sheer fact it would be interesting?

We do have that already. Usually the mystery is who murdered my energy income. Jokes aside, there is nothing particularly stopping us, but as always it needs to fit into the narratives and themes the Content Design team is exploring at any given time. It does suffer a bit since Stellaris on a galactic scale and murder mysteries are more personal. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: Nomads and crisis paths, how do they work? Cause all crisis paths depend on some form of megastructure. The Aetherophasic Engine, The Synaptic Lathe, The Behemoth Egg/Chrysalis, The Galactic Crucible. Are Nomadic empires incapable of becoming these? Or if they can, how does it work with another empire settling the system they built their super galaxy machine in?

You can actually own megastructures without owning the system, so a lot of these actually work quite well out the box. Cosmogenesis is the odd one out since it also required pops and that broke things. But we are investigating it! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

paprusteuton asked: Will the free update set to release alongside Stellaris: Willpower contain changes to internal politics, such as factions and elections?

The free updates alongside releases almost always include at least some updates to the systems we explore within the DLC release. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

the_no0b asked: Are there any plans for a Nomad specific crisis path? There's a lot of potential to be explored here, like an empire that acts like the scavenger bot, going around destroying stuff and incorporating it into the arcship to make it bigger and bigger...

Not especially, but if you wanted to make me happy go eat every world as a terravore! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

formula_c8h10n4o2 asked: Psionic Auras and Shroud Seals. It was previously mentioned that you could equip waystations with Aura Emitters but do Arkships have any ability to project a psionic aura with their populations or is ALL of that done through the waystations? And I presume Shroud Seals remain the same but I might as well ask. Nomadic Mindwardens?

All colonies project aura if they can. Arkships have colonies. itjustworks.gif Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

lucaszorua asked: can you decide to NOT make hyperlanes during a deep scan and just look for deposits etc

Deep Scanning cannot discover new hyperlanes Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

shaxingren3900 asked: Can a psionicist like Shroudshaper become a Shroud Patron？

I do not think we have ever considered that but its a very cool idea. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

engie4212 asked: What made y'all decide Arkships would carry nomadic empires?

Well having a planet off map where your pops lived and just pretend that you were nomadic sounded boring! Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

azaken_mobito asked: What Arkship do you all like to start with first?

It depends on how mean I'm planning on being. The meaner I am, the more likely I am to take the Military Arkship. If I'm nice I tend to go for the Scientific one, but not always. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

corpalcat asked: How will virtuality and nanomachine ascension work as a nomad?

Nanites has been answered already in anther question. Virtuality will work virtually the same. There is very little in its base functionality that Nomads clashed with. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

jackisonhiatus asked: The game's ship pathfinding seems obsessed with taking the shortest route possible, even if it leads into obvious dangers like a Marauder homespace or the Shattered Hive's forbidden zone. Is there any way to fix this?

In systems you don't want ships to path through, there is a small button next to the system name, if you click it, it will restrict the system from pathfinding Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

zilea asked: Have there been any considerations in regards to traditions and Ascension perks. And the bloat there is in there? Right now with the current available slots for either it's very shoehorned into a fixed set of traditions than being able to select some in response to what happens without feeling you loose what you aimed for me. Any plans to increase these slots up to say 12 and matching perks, or allow linking traditions so you can choose to have 2 inside the same slot.

We do not have any plans for something like that. In general the scarcity of AP's and Traditions slots is by design, we want more choices, not less. If builds get to stale, we'd rather investigate this from the direction of "this shouldn't always be the best choice, no matter what" Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

neonakoro asked: How many origins are available to nomads?

I posted a list of origins and civics available or barred to nomads in today's dev diary thread on our forum. ( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/stellaris-dev-diary-424-nomads-and-4-4-pegasus-preliminary-release-notes.1927421/page-2#post-31346985 ) Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

azaken_mobito asked: How useful is the Exodus Jump for invading other Empires you are at war with?

Very! Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

tempest1273 asked: I understand that in the basegame, being a settled vs nomadic empire will be binary with nothing like "a few planets and a few arkships" but will this be moddable so you can in fact have arkships and planets simultaneously?

You can try, however a lot of the ingame logic assumes that this never occurs and things might break. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

meatshtick asked: Does the scion origin work with nomads?

I was playing it in our Dev MP earlier today. Having a fleet of fallen empire ships made securing victory the CFL! contest dead easy and led to profits acquired via the Pest Control contracts I was issued. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

navar asked: Are Inward Perfection Nomads possible?

Ye sure! Go out and be grumpy! Telling people to stay off your lawn when you were the one that drove there. Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

necrolcz asked: May i ask if waystations are meant to be weaker spacestations? Or can they be just as good at static defence?

Different, rather than weaker. They are primarily economic in nature though, they're not particularly defensive. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

the_no0b asked: For regular empires the start of the game consists of scouring nearby systems to find good planets, like relic planets or gaia planets or even just good modifyers and events. Have Arkships something that balances out that they cannot have these things?

Nomads will also want to find special systems, but mostly for juicy deposits. What arkships do have is the promise of being size 27 at the max. Which is guaranteed as well as the freedom of moving away from threats. Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

gorehuchi asked: Will arc ships have functional turret models? That was something I missed (but understand not having) on bioships

Arkships have functional turrets. Biological ships not having turrets was a deliberate creative choice that the art team made Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

navar asked: Some civics like Byzantine Bureaucracy, Cutthroat Politics, and Imperial Cult lack flavor, will any be added in the near or distant future? They could have cool stuff, but are just number tweaks at the moment!

Sure Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

algae328 asked: How do nomadic terravores work? Do their purge vassals use the consume planet decision?

Their vassals first purge all the pops and sends all the resources to their parent empire. Then you can use your Arkship to eat the planet <:smjoe_happy:1107796759570284635> Answered by: Iggy (Content Design)

the_no0b asked: how many stellar cannons does it take to oneshot Cetana? What happens if we do so before are allowed to enter her systems, or even before she establishes contact?

Try it and find out. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

squishyfishy asked: How exactly does deepscanning work?

In order it does the following: * Grants some Intel on the System Owner depending on what they have in the system. * Rolls on the Deep Scanning outcome table: * 50% Nothing Happens (This chance increases depending how many times the planet has been Deep Scanned) * 15% Uncover a Resource Cache * 25% Uncover a Resource Deposit * 7% Uncover an Anomaly * 3% Uncover an Archaeology Site If you uncover a Resource Deposit, the Resource Depletion modifier from Harvesting is removed. Answered by: Alfray Stryke (Game Designer)

catos67 asked: how will nomad civil wars work

Grand Theft Arkship Answered by: Gruntsplayground (Game Designer)

terraseb asked: Normal empires have starbases for defense. Do nomads have something similar if one would rather make a like turtle strat or is it only things like ships and military arkships.

Staying put is anathema to Nomads. Void Reavers (and a few options in one of the Nomadic Origins) can fortify their Waystations a bit, but it won't compare to the defenses a settled empire can build in a system. Answered by: Eladrin (Game Director)

There are additional questions from the Q&A posted on the Paradox forums if you would like to read them all!

We also had some questions gathered by our Community Ambassador from the Chinese Stellaris Community - the translated questions he gave us and our answers (in English) are here:

Late-game performance remains one of the most frequently raised concerns among CN players. Are there any further plans to improve late-game performance, especially CPU utilization, multi-core scheduling, large-fleet situations, and high-pop/high-system galaxies?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Performance, AI, and Stability remain among the top priorities of the Custodian team.

How does the team prioritize bug fixing, stability issues, and event-chain blockers between major content updates? Would the team consider a more transparent or regular process for addressing frequently reported bugs?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

A part of our team, the Custodians, is always dedicated to improvements to the game. These are often exactly the things like you asked, bug fixing, stability issues, etc. That is why when there is usually a patch with no other DLCs attached, the patch notes are a lot longer. When we do release a new update, though, everyone moves over to fixing for a few weeks. Making sure to make the game as good as it can be.

Many CN players feel that weaker civics, origins, and ascension paths should be improved rather than strong playstyles being repeatedly nerfed. How does the team decide whether to buff weak options or nerf strong ones?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

We think so too! If you look back at Custodian updates in the past (especially 3.1 and 3.9) you can see that we really enjoy making old content especially good. This style of development has not been forgotten and it's something we like to do.

Some players worry that old DLC mechanics are weakened or made less attractive when newer DLC systems are introduced. How does the team approach balance between new paid content and older DLC/base-game playstyles?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

Since we are not a competitive pvp game with ladder rankings or tournaments, while we always try to balance new content against old content, we do sometimes overlook some of the more… “creative” uses taken by the Community when using new content. But also we keep making old stuff too powerful, I can't count how many times Rogue Servitors have been made into the best civic in the game.

Are there plans to improve AI empire management, especially in colony development, economy planning, diplomacy, and warfare, so that difficulty can rely less on raw bonuses and more on better decision-making?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Yes, we will continue to work on the AI. Game difficulties will very likely continue to grant them efficiency bonuses to make them a greater threat.

As Stellaris becomes increasingly complex, are there plans to improve automation and reduce repetitive micromanagement, such as planet automation, starbase templates, fleet reinforcement, construction queues, and ship design automation?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

It’s our desire that a player should feel at ease manually selecting a planetary designation, turning on planetary automation, and they should expect to end up with a planet that is roughly what they would expect a Mining World or Tech World to look like when it is done. We do expect you to manually manage your most critical core worlds (like your capital), but conquering a neighbor shouldn’t require immense levels of micromanagement. (This also connects indirectly to some of the AI improvements we want to make - it’s less of an issue if the planets you take over are better.) We have some plans for things like ship design automation planned for the 4.5 Open Beta during the summer.

Could the new-player experience and tutorial be improved to better explain planet development, economy planning, fleet design, and the overall mid-to-late game structure?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

With a game that shifts over time as much as Stellaris, we’ve found that other players tend to be the best teachers. (When 4.4 releases, we’ve asked some members of the Community to make tutorials for Nomads, for instance.) That said - I’d love to use the Scenario System to make a proper focused tutorial for various game systems.

Are there any plans to rework or expand ground warfare and planetary invasions? Many players feel the current army system is too simple compared with space combat.

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

We do not currently have plans for a ground combat rework.

Will diplomacy, espionage, trade, and internal politics receive deeper mechanics in future updates? Many players want more ways to influence other empires beyond direct warfare.

Iggy (Content Design) said:

The upcoming Willpower DLC will focus on external politics and pressures; you should see things like ethics attraction, and alliances matter more there. This is something we enjoy and want to keep exploring and expanding.

Will future development include more narrative-driven content, event chains, story origins, scenario-style packs, or deeper long-form stories?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

We always love telling new stories as well as expanding on existing ones. Look to Willpower for the “Lost Makers” origin where you learn more about the precursors than we ever knew before. And with the new Scenario Pack where you play as the Unbidden, learn more about the Extradimensional Invaders and why they might have come to our galaxy.

Are there plans to revisit older systems and DLC content, such as Fallen Empires, the L-Cluster, Leviathans, older megastructures, older ascension perks, and older origins, to bring them closer to the depth of newer content?

Iggy (Content Design) said:

These are all parts of the game the Custodians have had their eyes on. One interesting thing, now that Utopia and others have been folded into the base game, new updates can make use of these and assume that they are part of every player experience. This makes it a lot easier to expand on things like older megastructures.

Will cross-DLC interactions become a larger focus in future updates? For example, stronger links between ascension paths, crises, Fallen Empires, L-Cluster/Nanotech content, Cosmogenesis, and Galactic Custodian/Imperium systems.

Iggy (Content Design) said:

The Custodian team is always looking for interesting and fun ways to improve and connect DLCs, for instance we got the new Fallen Empire and Cosmogensis combined when you play with BioShips. One thing you should look forward to is the “Lost Makers” origin as it ties together with existing precursors.

Can modding support be improved with better documentation, more stable interfaces, version control options, and more exposed hooks for newer systems?

Alfray Stryke (Game Designer) said:

Whenever possible, we aim to make new additions to the game as moddable as we can.

Are there plans to improve Simplified Chinese localization quality and terminology consistency, especially for newer mechanical text and UI strings? Could there be a clearer channel or workflow for collecting and fixing localization issues?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Our Community Ambassador has been bringing your reports directly to us, and we hope that it has improved the quality of the translations at least somewhat.

Are there plans to improve multiplayer stability and desync issues, especially late-game desyncs and random_count-related problems? Would official matchmaking ever be considered?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

Multiplayer stability is incredibly high on the Custodian programming team’s priorities.

What is the long-term development vision for Stellaris? How many more years of major updates does the team currently plan for, and how does the team decide between continuing Stellaris and eventually making a sequel?

Alfray Stryke (Game Designer) said:

We have all of science-fiction to draw upon for inspiration and the design team has no shortage of ideas for future updates.

Could the game offer more configurable galaxy/gameplay settings for players who prefer different pacing, such as resource output, empire size penalties, fleet capacity, and crisis timing?

Eladrin (Game Director) said:

We’ve already added some sliders in galaxy generation for some of these - naval capacity and command limit sliders were added in 4.3.3, and the end-game year (which dictates when the end-game crisis can occur) has been around since the beginning. 4.4 will be adding a Fallen and Awakened Empire Strength slider, and we have a Galactic Resource Abundance slider planned for this summer’s 4.5 Open Beta.

Many thanks to everyone who participated!

What’s Next?

Next week we have our Nomads Art Blast. I took a peek at the work-in-progress diary, and it’s looking really nice. See you then!

by PDX-Loke

Hello, Another more small and quick patch has been readied, aiming to fix a few extra impactful bugs from Monday's release.

Version 4.4.3 should now be available via Steam and GOG, with MS Store following shortly. Please find the change log below.

Stellaris 4.4.3 patch notes

• The Void Reavers civic no longer requires both First Contact and Nomads

• Corrected the Trust and Opinion thresholds required to propose a Waystation Pact.

• Fixed opinion modifiers from Defender of the Galaxy applying when they shouldn't.

More comprehensive improvements are underway, accumulating into a proper patch. Until then!

by PDX-Loke

Hello all, The team has put together a quick hotfix for your continued enjoyment of Nomads and 4.4. 4.4.2 should now be available on Steam and GOG, with MS Store to follow soon. Please find the change log below.

4.4.2 ‘Pegasus’ Hotfix Release Notes​

Balance:​

• Reduced the rate of the Forever Cruise situation speed on all difficulties.

• Significantly reduced the amount that the situation increases based on game difficulty. (These are further reduced from last night’s Open Beta release.)

  • Doubled the grace period after completing a crew or passenger contract - it will now pause progress in the passenger satisfaction situation for 24 months.

  • More comprehensive changes will be coming in this weekend's Open Beta for the patch planned for next week.

Bugfix:​

• The Defenders of the Galaxy achievement should now be completable

• \ Fix overlapping and missing items in single player game setup

Stability:​

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some cases.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the animated main menu background from the in-game settings screen.

• Fixed a crash that could occur while the AI was evaluating which contract to take on.

• Fix crashing on 800p and lower resolutions when clicking on Waystations.

• Fix combat crash when calculating ship design states (from required component arrays having null-object placeholders that defaulted to the “weapon” type)

• Fix crash when escaping combat as an enemy is destroyed

• Fix crash in spawn_random_anomaly when orbital fleet has no ships

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering an empire's ethics tooltips, including after that empire was destroyed.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering ethics tooltips in the empire setup screen.

• Fixed a potential crash when opponents were deleted in mid-combat

Our work continues, do let us know if you are encountering issues, preferably through reports in our bug forum.

Thank you!

Hi everyone!

We've updated the stellaris_test beta branch with some fixes that we're planning to release (likely tomorrow).

Please note: This is an opt-in open beta. To opt-in: Right Click Stellaris, Properties, Betas tab and Choose "Stellaris_test" from the dropdown.

Balance:

• Reduced the rate of the Forever Cruise situation speed on all difficulties.

  • Also reduced the amount that the situation increases based on game difficulty.

  • More comprehensive changes will be coming in this weekend's Open Beta for the patch planned for next week.

Bugfix:

• Void Reavers no longer additionally requires First Contact

Stability:

• Preventing a waystation UI from crashing in some cases.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when changing the animated main menu background from the in-game settings screen.

• Fixes a crash during AI contract evaluation.

• Fix crashing on 800p and lower resolutions when clicking on Waystations.

Thank you for playing Stellaris!

Hello Stellaris Community!

Stellaris: Nomads - the first installment of Stellaris: Season 10 - is available now!

Stellaris: Nomads is available now alone, or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 10!

The Galaxy is not a trophy to be seized, but a path to be taken. In Stellaris: Nomads, you will survive the void by staying in motion. While the great powers of the Galaxy squabble over lines on the map, your civilization has realized a fundamental truth: life flourishes on the move.

Chart Waylines across the stars, linking your Waystations into living networks of trade, influence, and opportunity. Your strength lies in motion, in presence, in the relationships you build from system to system. Your people do not look up to the stars. They gaze at them through the viewports of Arkships: massive, self-sustaining habitats that serve as your capital.

But even those who call the void home cannot ignore the coming darkness. Will you take up the mantle of Defender of the Galaxy and stand in service to all who share the stars?

Stellaris: Nomads contains:​

• Nomadic Empires​

  • Create empires that are not bound by claiming systems or colonizing worlds. Instead, you will navigate the stars with massive Arkships.

  • The Arkship: Your capital, your cradle, and your fortress. This massive, fully upgradable wonder replaces traditional Worlds for your empire. Choose between three different options to fully reflect the vision of your government:

    • Military Class: A mobile flagship designed to project power.

    • Scientific Class: A roaming laboratory dedicated to the discovery of the Galaxy’s secrets.

    • Civilian Class: An industrial hub capable of unparalleled resource extraction.

  • The Wayline Network: Your trail through the void. By constructing Waystations, you create Waylines - lasting interstellar trade routes that harvest resources you can claim with a simple pass through. These routes benefit both you and settled empires, making you the pivot point of mercantile possibilities in the Galaxy.

  • The Contract System: As a nomadic empire, perform task-driven interactions with other empires to earn favor, resources, and influence. As a settled empire, issue these Contracts and get things done!

• New Origins​

  • Voidfarers: The standard origin for Nomadic Empires. A flexible, streamlined start for you to define your own nomadic journey.

  • Heirs of the Khan: Play as the successor of a murdered Khan, as you evade marauder hit-squads through trickery and bribery until you are strong enough to return to reclaim your throne.

  • The Sacred Path: Guide a fleet of pilgrims towards ancestral holy sites in a galactic pilgrimage. Your journey is a spiritual odyssey fueled by faith.

  • Forever Cruise: Manage a society split between a pampered elite demanding new entertainment and sightseeing opportunities from their vista lounges, and an overworked crew keeping the dream afloat.

  • Nomadic empires support many existing Origins as well.

• New Ambition: Defender of the Galaxy​

  • While a Galactic Nemesis (available in Stellaris: Nemesis) threatens the Galaxy, the Defender of the Galaxy will rise and try to save it.

• New Megastructure: The Stellar Cannon​

  • Why simply power a civilization when you could fire at one? This Megastructure allows you to weaponize your entire energy stockpile, discharging it into a devastating beam capable of striking enemy systems across the galaxy.

• Nomadic Enclave: Champion’s Forge Live!​

  • Experience the Galaxy’s most extreme spectacles with this nomadic enclave! Answer the call and participate in gladiatorial fleet combat all across the galaxy. The winner gets to hold the Trophy relic and glory until the next tournament, with the losers looking on with envy.

• Wanderlust Ascension Perk

• New Civics 

  • Caravan Masters: Trade is the lifeblood of empires, and trade blooms best when growing on a steady network of relays and caravansaries.

  • Deep Sleep: Experts in cryonics, waking the crews of their Arkships only when they would be most productive.

  • Void Reavers: Freebooters of the stars, this society has only vague notions of property. They respect the right of the strong and the cunning to seize ill-protected riches for themselves.

  • Flight Schools: Pilots have always been heroes of the people, inspiring many to strive to become just like them. Before long, becoming a pilot was considered a symbol of status, creating generations of ace pilots whose results speak for themselves.

  • Star Seekers: Explorers and Travellers of the sea of stars. Each new star, each new creature or oddity found, fuels your peoples desire to celebrate this marvelous galaxy.

• New Renowned Nomadic Paragons

• New Tradition Swaps

• New Music Tracks by Andreas Waldetoft and Batzorig Vaanchig

Getting started with Nomads

Playing as a Nomadic empire is pretty different from playing a regular empire.  From Waylines to Embarking, SimasTV is here to run you through how to do play as a Nomadic Empire.

For Mod Enjoyers

Hello fellow Mod enthusiasts!

When you load up the game, you might notice that your mod playlists have been deactivated. Deactivating Mod Playlists is a new feature in the launcher, to try and reduce the chances of loading an un-updated mod that would result in crashing or other issues. But never fear! Your mod playlist are all still there, you just need to select the Playlist from the dropdown menu in the launcher. 

Don’t forget on Steam you can also roll-back to 4.3.7 while you’re waiting for your mods to update:

Right-click Stellaris, go to Properties, click the Betas tab, and then choose “4.3.7 rollback” from the dropdown menu.

We also have a selection of Mods that will be updated on release day:

If your mod isn’t on the list, join us on the Official Stellaris Discord and keep an eye on the #updated-mods-feed forum channel, where recently updated mods are posted directly to discord for your convenience.

Thank you all for playing Stellaris, and we hope you enjoy playing Stellaris: Nomads!

by Eladrin

Hi everyone! The Stellaris 4.4 ‘Pegasus’ update and Nomads are releasing next Monday, June 15th. Today we have the preliminary release notes, the last Spinal Mount, the new Achievements, and information about today’s Dev Q&A. We’ll have some last minute fixes and adjustments going into 4.4, so Monday’s patch notes will likely differ very slightly from these. There are two things that I want to highlight that we haven’t talked about in dev diaries: There are some changes being made to the Paradox Launcher - when 4.4 releases, your mod lists will automatically disable. Once the mods have been updated, you’ll need to re-enable the modlist to re-enable them. The Launcher will also bail to the main menu if you try to Resume an incompatible save. These changes are intended to reduce the number of people that end up with bricked ironman saves or have crash-on-load issues when we make a major update. The other is that your trip across the stars with Nomads will be accompanied by seven amazing tracks from Andreas Waldetoft - Boarding the Arkship, Echoes of Home, Enlightenment, Stellar Pilgrims, The Departure, Towards the Unknown, and Waylines, as well as an additional special track, Manduul Haan, by Batzorig Vaanchig. Now, on to the release notes!

Nomads Preliminary Release Notes​

• Nomadic Empires introduced

  • Arkships

    • Massive mobile capitals that replace homeworlds entirely. Serve as colonies, shipyards, and warships simultaneously, with three specialization classes (Military, Scientific, Civilian) that can be upgraded through three tiers and customized with modules, systems, and late-game Spinal Mounts.

  • Waylines & Waystations

    • Construct Waystations to harvest resources from systems without claiming them. Adjacent Waystations automatically link into Waylines that propagate trade and modifier bonuses. Wayline Pacts allow two Nomadic empires to share each other's network benefits.

  • Contracts

    • Settled empires can issue task-driven Contracts (Military, Science, Resource, Diplomacy) for Nomadic empires to fulfill. Completing Contracts earns Trade, improves Opinion and Trust, and unlocks deeper diplomatic options including Wayline Pacts.

  • Settling and Embarking

    • After completing the Adaptability or Versatility tradition, Nomadic empires can Settle on an empty planet, with options to settle partially or fully and leave the remainder as a subject. Settled empires can Embark onto Arkships through a mirrored process, converting their starbases into Waystations.

• New Ambition path: Defender of the Galaxy

  • Transforms the Defender of the Galaxy Ascension Perk into a full five-level Ambition path. Progress by cooperating with other empires, assuming Galactic Custodianship, and forming the Galactic Defense Force. Unlocks the Paladin Initiative and unique hero ships commanded by promoted admirals. Win condition: defeat two end-game Crises and abdicate your Custodianship.

• Stellar Cannon Megastructure

  • A purely offensive Megastructure requiring a neutron star or pulsar, buildable without an Ascension Perk. Fires your entire energy stockpile at a target system after a 140-day charge, dealing ship damage and colony devastation (10%/25%/50% at each tier). Shots over 50,000 energy also shift all planets in the system one step up the dryness scale.

• Nomadic Enclave: Champions Forge Live!

  • A roving gladiatorial enclave that hosts fleet combat tournaments every twenty years across the galaxy, with weight classes scaling from early- to late-game fleet sizes. Winners hold the Trophy relic until the next tournament. Also offers services including combat intelligence on rivals, tournament venue selection, and introductions to Nomadic Paragons.

• New Nomadic Origins

  • Voidfarers

    • The general-purpose Nomadic origin. Provides a flexible, unscripted start with no overriding narrative obligation, suited to players who want to define their own nomadic path from the ground up.

  • Heirs of the Khan

    • Begin as survivors of a Khan's assassination, hunted by escalating Marauder bounty fleets. Complete unique military Contracts to weaken your hunters. Survive and potentially claim the throne yourself!

  • The Sacred Path

    • A Spiritualist origin built around surveying a series of sacred sites scattered across the galaxy by your ancestors. Each site presents a distinct choice about faith and history.

  • Forever Cruise

    • Two species share a single Arkship: a working Crew and a leisure-seeking Passenger class. Balance the Passenger Satisfaction situation to avoid Planetfall on one extreme and Mutiny on the other.

    • We’ve also added a special “Hospitality Servitors” variant of the Rogue Servitors civic, where the Passengers are even more demanding and maintaining the cruise is more difficult.

• New Ascension Perk: Wanderlust

  • As a Nomad, seek rare systems and be rewarded.

• New Paragons

  • Orun Veyth, the Revenant

    • A scarred admiral who lost everything to a purge and has been settling the debt ever since.

  • Ashar, the Wandering Sage

    • She held a seat at a royal court for decades, then walked away from it because the stars had more to teach her.

  • Sero the Younger, the Naturalist

    • He left a prestigious Grand Archive to study living things instead of dead ones.

  • Unit Solace, the Caregiver

    • A synthetic father who chose exile over abandoning his fragile son when his people synthetically ascended.

  • Th'aal Hask'Guron, the Champion

    • A warrior of considerable size and considerable joy, who treats every battlefield like a hunting ground and your Arkship like a trophy hall.

  • Seralune, the Lost Princess

    • She boards your Arkship with nothing but polite manners and the feeling she has been somewhere before. Follow where she points.

• New Nomad Civics

  • Caravan Masters

    • Every Waystation is a marketplace, every contract a relationship, and every relationship a potential profit margin.

  • Void Reavers

    • Not all who wander are lost, some are just waiting for you to let your guard down. Siphon resources from colonies in systems where your Waystations lurk, or skip the subtlety and plunder planets directly with the Plundering bombardment stance. Yarr!

  • Star Seekers

    • Life between destinations is its own destination. Gather resources as you travel, then burn through your stockpiles in a galaxy-spanning festival that grounds one Arkship and celebrates everything your people have seen.

  • Flight Schools

    • The best pilots in the galaxy didn't grow up with a planet to land on.

  • Deep Sleep

    • Not every passenger needs to be awake for the journey. Manage your population through the long transits between stars, keeping only the hands you need on deck.

• New Species Traits

  • Photoadaptive/Solar Celled

  • Recursive Learners/Structural Awareness

  • Reaver

  • Terraphobic

  • Interconnected

• New Music tracks by Andreas Waldetoft and Batzorig Vaanchig

• 8 new achievements

4.4 'Pegasus' Preliminary Patch Notes​

Feature​

• The Paradox Launcher now automatically disables your mods on major version updates.

  • To re-enable your mods after they have been updated for the patch, change the ‘DLC only’ play list back to your associated mod list. Your preferred mod list will then stick through the major version.

  • Attempting to resume an incompatible save will now divert you to the main menu instead of loading it.

  • The launcher should now show a warning if there has been a major patch since your last saved game

• Joining & Leaving wars in progress

  • Empires that are not the primary participant in a war may now attempt to enter an ongoing war by negotiating with the leader of the side they want to join, or leave an ongoing war by negotiating with the leader of the opposition. These can be found as terms in trade negotiations.

    • Leaving a war creates a truce, and negatively affects your former ally’s opinion of your empire due to your treachery.

    • An opponent may be reluctant to let you get off easily if they feel that they’re winning the war, or if they particularly dislike you.

• Empires whose colonies are all occupied now suffer escalating consequences. Each month while fully occupied, they gain a stacking Hopeless War modifier worth +5% War Exhaustion gain, and their wars accumulate +1% Attrition per month, which can take them past the normal 100% cap. Both effects vanish the moment any colony is liberated. AI secondary participants with all colonies occupied also gain increasing desire to seek a separate peace.

  • This will generally only be relevant when an empire has allies in a war, or is in multiple wars with split occupation.

• To further celebrate our 10th Anniversary: We have added a background selector to the Graphics settings screen, allowing players to choose which animated main menu background is displayed, including all DLC frontends, Latest Release, and Random options.

Improvement:​

• Automated jobs now have their own workforce limit slider, letting you directly cap how many of a job's slots are filled by automation.

• Finished the removal of Unemployment begun with 4.3.0.

  • When a pop loses their job, they now immediately fall to their stratum's fallback category (Citizen, Maintenance Drone, etc.) rather than passing through a temporary unemployed tier.

• Reworked Nascent Stage pops to work more similarly to sub-species integration, with approximately 1/60th of the pops growing into their base species each month (on colonies that are at least 60 months old). This should result in Nascent Stage being more reliable and less error-prone.

• Improved how pops compete for jobs combining basic job weights and how efficient they actually are at them, so a more suitable pop will now properly displace one already holding a position. (i.e. Slaves and shackled robots will tend to displace free organics from worker tier jobs, intelligent pops will take more research positions, etc.)

• Higher-stratum jobs turn over more slowly - Workers and Simple Drones may reshuffle every 3 months, Specialists and Complex Drones every 7, and Elites every 13 - so an out-of-place pop won't be kicked out immediately but will eventually be displaced by a better fit.

• Gestalt pops have a weaker attachment to their current jobs overall.

• On underpopulated planets, pops tend to fill jobs proportionally between all the capped jobs they are eligible for, though bonuses to job efficiency (such as from the colony designation or traits) could heavily skew this towards certain jobs. They will still tend to prefer higher stratum jobs when possible.

• Prioritized jobs ignore this proportional fill, but lower strata jobs may still be bypassed in favor of higher weight ones.

• Pops should no longer take deficits into account for job prioritization, as this caused extremely erratic monthly behavior on underpopulated planets.

• Event option tooltips for ethic drift effects in the Costume Culture, Roots Reclaimed, and Fans No More First Contact events, and the Broken Shackles origin homecoming option, now show a single summary line instead of one entry per affected pop group.

• The System Initialiser selector now hides systems you are not eligible for (for example, KotG Sol if you do not have the KotG origin).

• You can now use Tab and Ctrl-Tab on the Starbase tab to advance to the next or previous owned Starbase. (This advances through upgraded Starbases, skipping Outposts.)

• It is now possible to queue the return order. Useful when issuing commands for the logistic ship and then you want it to return to the arkship to drop off the stockpile.

• Added a slider to set the amount of randomized nomadic empires that is spawned during galaxy generation.

• When building megastructures that are meant to be located outside of the gravity well, the eligible space will be highlighted in green instead instead of marking ineligible space in red.

• the kill_country console command now accepts an optional ID parameter

• Choosing a Megastructure from the fleet order button moves the camera to the constructor's system

• Habitats and Ringworlds now explicitly state that they have artificial climates.

• Colonize button on planets will now be disabled ( with a tooltip explaining the reason ) if there is already a scheduled colonization action for that planet. Previously players would still get blocked, but it took more steps to realize that you have already ordered a colonization ship.

• Added message for mission completion.

• Orders to construct megastructures will no longer be automatically canceled by issuing some other order. Player will need to explicitly click cancel orders button to avoid unintended cancellation and loss of progress.

• 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.

• Fleets that return to or are built at a Juggernaut or Arkship now automatically follow it.

• The Megastructures UI now shows the top 10 recommended systems for Arc Furnaces, Dyson Swarms, and Habitats when hovering over each megastructure type.

Bugfix​

• Fixed an issue where pops could end up in "reprocessing" jobs forever.

• Certain leaders are no longer immune to the negative side effects of mutagenic spas.

• Fixed an issue where the Mindlink Metropolis district would appear in the wrong position on the capital planet screen after unlocking the Mind Meld perk.

• Habitat Mining Station designation was incorrectly scoring energy zones instead of mining zones.

• The Machine Uprising no longer requires the robots to outnumber organics 100:1 to have a slight chance of success. Disassembling or displacing Mechanical pops during the uprising now also has finer granularity.

• Space Fauna in the Vivarium no longer lose their species type or culling resources after maturing to a new life stage.

• Recently captured Space Fauna no longer revert growth or lose their ship design after a few months.

• Fixed some Leader Maximum Negative Traits modifiers being listed in places where they shouldn't.

• Imperial Heirs can now gain more relevant leaders traits they were prevented from getting before.

• Fixed Necrophage origin tooltip incorrectly stating 1.2K prepatent Pops instead of 2.4K for non-genocidal empires.

• The Adrift anomaly ship has been renamed from "Science Ship" to "Courier Ship".

• Vipra and the Behemothkin are now correctly replaced with spider-like portraits in Arachnophilia mode. (Even though the Behemothkin has four arms.) The Mindwarden intentionally is excluded because their armor is piloted by millions of spiders.

• We make Great Pets requires owning an alien zoo again

• Make selectables of different types not able to be selected together

• Monthly Loyalty Change breakdown tooltip displayed all modifier values at twice their actual value.

• Fixed all four hostile DSC aura types sharing the same stack ID, causing only one to be active at a time.

• Fixed the Surveyor attempting to apply incorrect deposits.

• The Ember Cruiser and the Ember Battleship now display the correct localized text strings in their descriptions

• The Necrophage origin tooltip display "prepatent" as intended and swap the wording of "Rulers" to "Elites"

• The Storm Chasers origins modifier no longer has a :: instead of : in its description

• Fixed colonisable planets sometimes generating with no energy generator districts.

• Fixed Volcanic worlds not having uncapped energy districts.

• Fixed Production Unit ringworld segment missing correct zones for fallen machine empires.

• Try to prevent systems spawned via mandatory_neighbors from spawning too close to other systems.

• Fixed precursor civilizations always appearing in the same region of the galaxy regardless of seed.

• Crises will no longer spawn starbases after purging a pop if there are hostiles in the system.

• Fixed fleet return orders being silently cancelled when the fleet was in orbit of a friendly starbase.

• if the Deep Space Citadel Design name is too long, it no longer overflows the button asset.

• Fixed some names containing certain characters (e.g. "ä") not being displayed.

• Thermophile Void Dwellers no longer start with food production

• The Create Resort World and Arcology Project decisions now correctly block each other even in the build queue.

• Fixed a logical discrepancy in planetary decisions on nanite worlds.

• The Symbiont Overdrive edict now unlocks correctly for Wilderness empires.

• The Confidence in Variance agenda correctly appears in Domination Traditions for Gestalt empires, and it has a finisher effect.

• The Biomorphosis Situation no longer mentions Genomic Research Facilities if you are a Wilderness empire.

• Next-tier unlock of Focus Tasks now requires 50% of your empire's available tasks, not 50% of all tasks

• Common Ground and Hegemony starting empires can no longer be homicidals

• Fixed an issue with the Rubricator system not spawning under certain circumstances

• Fixed Non-Aggression Pacts not having decreased Trust requirements if you have the Familiar Face civic.

• Uplifting can no longer uplift pops on uncolonized planets.

• Fixed AI not budgeting zro for starbase construction and upkeep.

• Fixed AI not budgeting dark matter for starbase construction and upkeep.

• Fixed AI not budgeting food for starbase upkeep.

• Fixed AI not budgeting exotic gases for non-orbital ring starbase buildings.

• Fixed AI not budgeting rare crystals for non-orbital ring starbase buildings.

• Fixed a background error where the "First Paragon Trait" timeline event kept trying to happen when the leader is a paragon

• Fixed empires with Biological Ships not getting access to G-slot defensive platforms

• You can no longer build dyson swarms around depositless stars

• Bio-ship empires now correctly receive bio-ship technologies during the crisis tech grant, instead of silently getting nothing.

• Retreating ships with long range weapons will no longer be able to escape the outer bounds of the system

• Fixed overlord expansion tithe being applied after the outpost influence cost cap.

• Fix mobile starbases' country modifiers not always being applied

• Fleet UI will no longer change header color when inspecting various types of ships if communications are not yet established.

• Fixed elites from providing double exotic gases from the gaseous fauna modifier.

• Updated bio-trophies not benefiting from some modifiers to social classes.

• The Fallen Empire demanding you to accept humiliation will no longer have a broken tooltip option.

• Fixed a possible crash on INF_ORIGIN_RED_GIANT_TRIANGULATION special project.

• Fixed fleets being unable to return to a mobile starbase while it is in FTL transit.

• Scripted localization error corrected in two Shroud-related events.

• Fixed issue where after quelling a rebellion, rebel systems further away from the player's territory were maintaining their independence.

• When reading saved outliner settings, incorrect entries in the "sort" arrays are now updated correctly.

• The Sentinel Auxiliary Fleet given to help you fight the scourge no longer contains multiple designs with empty slots

• Collateral damage from titanic weapons now correctly benefits from weapon type damage modifiers and properly attributes kills for scripted on-actions.

Balance​

• Orbital Rings can now be dismantled.

• Abandon colony cost decreased from 200 to 50 influence.

• Planet designation bonuses have been noticeably increased across the board. (10% -> 15%, 5% -> 10%)

• Some key technologies related to Ascension Paths will now have higher chances to appear if you're on that Path.

• Added Interlink faction for Democratic Interlink cyborg pops

• Void Dweller empires can now be selected as Advanced Start empires.

• Updated Orbital Ring armor values.

• Merged the Titan Assembly Yards and Colossal Assembly Yards starbase buildings into a single Capital Assembly Yards building. Unlocks with any capital ship technology, costs 1250 alloys / 25 energy upkeep, and grants +2 Shipyard Capacity.

• All species trait slave_cost resources changed from energy to trade.

• Updated the spawning conditions for mining and research deposits in galaxy generation.

• Added a Fallen Empire Strength galaxy setup slider (0.25x to 5.0x); Fallen and Awakened Empire fleets now scale with it and with difficulty, gain rare titans and colossi, and Awakened Empire fleet count now reacts to the strongest empire in the galaxy.

• The Civil Exclusion agenda now also grants Slave Workforce as part of the finisher effect.

• The Black Hole Observatory has been replaced with the Stellar Observatory. This can be built in all star systems, but the output depends on the system star type.

• Branch office influence cost is now capped to 1000.

• The energy cost to establish a branch office has been converted to trade. This cost no longer scales with distance.

• Having Low Economic Intel on an Empire now gives you visibility on deposits in the empire's space.

• Intel on Systems no longer gives Intel on Colonies.

• The Expel Corporation War Goal now provides you with trade instead of energy for each branch office destroyed.

• Astrometeorology civics now give +50% Stellar Observatory output.

• Scientists can now obtain the Engineer trait.

• Commanders can now obtain the Roamer trait.

  • The Roamer trait now provides +10% Sublight Speed as a base effect, +10% Survey Speed for Scientists, and +5 Evasion for Commanders.

• Grand Archives can now be built around non-habitable planets.

• Unity resource culling conversion value adjusted from 1 to 3

• Commander traits that grant resources when ships are killed (Material Liberator, Crusader, Shipbreaker, Plunderer) now have larger rewards and scale by the destroyed ship's used naval capacity instead of a flat per-kill amount.

UI​

• Situation Log UI improvements, including categorization of entries and new interface looks

• Starbase module and building tooltips now show equipped component stats

• Ship details panel now shows full weapon and strike craft stats in component slot tooltips

• Expansion planner sort buttons now display district type names instead of resource names.

• Fixed too large leader tooltip hitbox in Paragon recruitment and conversation event windows.

• Build queue tooltips for Shipyards now show ship class icon and design name

• Megastructure UI overhaul and art pass

• Fixed misleading tooltip for outpost influence cost when it is capped.

• Hid leaders from Combat UI

• The Planet View UI now shows districts that are being built as part of the overview where the built, unused and blocker ones are to give a more accurate overview of the situation

• Inactive triggered Auras will now be hidden from the component tooltip of the shipview

• Rename and move some steps in the Empire Creation menu

• Add a scrollbar to Empire Creator's planet class description

• Transport fleets docked at a starbase without a docked ship upkeep modifier no longer show a "Ready to land troops" tooltip.

• "Research Projects in System" in right-click menu for construction ships is now shown if multiple construction ships are selected.

• Renamed "Civilian Ships" to "Utility Ships"

• Policy groups that have been unlocked but not yet initialized are no longer shown in the policies view.

• Tooltips can now update their text while locked in position.

• Removed the "Auto Track Log Entries" button from the event window (mods may re-enable it).

• Improved concept tooltips for starbase building and module unlocks.

AI​

• AI now treats unity as a real production target across all three plan stages, research can scale 40% higher in advanced (2500 -> 3500 cap), and endgame alloys drop from a 2300 ceiling to 1300 so that the trillions-of-research endgame research numbers can actually outcompete alloys for build slots/pops.

• The AI now steers building construction toward building sets that match each planet's designation for tighter, better-specialized worlds.

• The "underdeveloped planet limit" that was supposed to prevent AI overextension is more effective. Instead of only applying in the first 15 years and then only against bad planets, it now softly discourages colonization of any world once the empire already has too many undeveloped colonies.

• Empires that are still small will now expand more aggressively, so they more reliably claim their homeworld's guaranteed habitables and nearby good worlds before settling into build-up mode.

• AI resettlement now moves pops from overpopulated worlds to underpopulated ones regardless of how those planets got that way, rather than only emptying out worlds with terrible habitability. New colonies should grow faster and veteran worlds should stagnate less.

• On well-developed planets (2500+ pops), the AI is now more likely to round out its rural districts so it unlocks the building slots they provide. It still won't waste slots on a district whose specialization zones aren't available yet, so early-game behavior is unchanged.

• Fixed an issue where optional subplans (like pop count and strategic resource targets) were still required to complete a plan, which stalled the AI on one economic tier for long periods; they now behave as true stretch goals

• Added a new intermediate economic plan between the basic and advanced tiers, so AI empires experience a smaller jump in expected income (energy, minerals, alloys, research, etc.) as they graduate out of the early game.

• Fixed a bug where the AI's consumer goods scaling production check looked at the food stockpile instead of the consumer goods stockpile, sometimes causing the AI to over-build or under-build CG production.

• The AI now proactively tears down and rebuilds urban zones that don't match a planet's designation - for example, a col_foundry world will swap out a generic zone_industrial for zone_foundry to double-specialize into its designation. Swaps apply a per-building penalty for each existing building that doesn't carry over through the new zone's included_building_sets, require a larger affinity margin when the slot is already specialized to prevent churn between near-equivalent candidates, and must clear a minimum-benefit floor so the construction cost is justified by the economic delta. Planets already rich in matched buildings stay put; planets with mismatched buildings restructure.

• Colony designation affinity (the ai_building_set_affinity on colony types) now biases AI zone selection in addition to building selection. A designation that prefers the "foundry" building set will now also weight foundry-themed zones more heavily during construction planning.

• Nanotech Worlds: Fixed AI empires getting stuck after converting planets to Nanotech Worlds. The AI now prioritizes nanolabs, nanotech cauldrons, and nanite transmuters on pc_nanotech colonies instead of leaving rural districts unspecialized.

• The AI will now reactively build storage boosting buildings when any tangible resource is above 90% capacity.

• Increased AI weights for taking Ascension Paths. Added Spiritualist and Materialist AI weight synergies for Psionic and Cybernetic Ascension.

• AI empires that have taken the Synthetic Evolution AP will now always be able to take tech_synthetic_workers (even if they don't normally use robots).

• AI empires are much more likely to take Ascension Perks and their associated Tradition Trees.

• The AI now sometimes uses buildings that provide a static number of jobs, like Alloy Foundries or Civilian Industries.

• The AI no longer rigs their Hydroponic Farms with explosives, ready to blow in the off chance that their economy starts doing too well.

• Reduced the fleet power upgrade threshold the AI requires before they will upgrade ships from +30% to +10%.

• AI will no longer want to build army types that fail the "allow" trigger on all colonies.

• AI can now build armies that cost resources other than minerals or food.

Stability:​

• Fixed OOS with merging species (playing with nascent species)

• Fixed OOS with country economy due to dependency missing in threaded code.

• link_to effect now supports null bypasses (as both the scope and target) instead of crashing.

• Fixed a crash when closing the game via Alt+F4 or the window close button while a save was in progress.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over event option tooltips generated by effects iterating large numbers of pop groups.

• Fixed an OOS happening on hotjoin when a situation has enough progress to go past the last stage.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when AI empires evaluated megastructure construction orders.

• CS_SPECIES_COUNT, CS_SPECIES_INDEX OOS when playing with nascent species

• CS_COUNTRY_RESOURCES OOS

• Fixed crash when using horizontalScrollbar in containerWindowType.

• Fixed crash on Mac in galaxy generation due to running out of stack when randomizing traits for species

Modding:​

• Introduced Colony and Carrier as scopes

  • Colony is where your pops, buildings, and most everything else important is hosted. This is ‘carried’ by a Carrier

  • Carriers are either Ships or Planets. You will see most, if not all, planet events have been converted to carrier events. Same with flags and other effects. This is to make them work with Nomads easier.

• Added is_nomadic option for create_country

• Added "rat" as an alias for research_all_technologies console command, which now works in addition to "rta".

• The demotion and promotion blocks in pop job script definitions have been removed.

• The intermediate unemployment job types and pop categories (ruler_unemployment, specialist_unemployment, worker_unemployment, complex_drone_unemployment, simple_drone_unemployment, slave_unemployment2) have been removed.

• The pop_unemployment_demotion_time_mult static modifier and pop_cat_X_unemployment_political_power family of modifiers (used in living standard definitions) have been removed.

• Nascent Stage presapient maturation is no longer handled via script demotion chains. It is now driven by the new forced_integration block on species traits. Set integration_rate (fraction of pops converted per month) and optionally minimum_colony_age (in months) on any species trait to gradually integrate pops into their parent species.

• Two new defines: AI_UNBUILT_DISTRICT_BOOST_POP_THRESHOLD (default 2500) and AI_UNBUILT_DISTRICT_BOOST_MULTIPLIER (default 2.0). The multiplier is applied to any districts that have 0 built when the planet meets the pop threshold, lacks that district type, and at least one of its specialization slots has a potential district specialization for the planet.

• A new ai_building_set_affinity = { = ... } block is now accepted on colony types - each entry multiplies the AI's build weight for buildings in the named building set when that designation is active.

• Defines AI_RESETTLE_FROM_LOW_HABITABILITY_THRESHOLD and AI_RESETTLE_TO_HIGH_HABITABILITY_THRESHOLD have been removed - they no longer drive behavior. The AI now only requires source pops ≥ 2× target pops, and rejects any target with habitability below AI_MIN_HABITABILITY_TO_COLONIZE.

• Two new defines in common/defines/00_defines.txt: AI_FEW_PLANETS_COLONIZATION_THRESHOLD (default 5) and AI_FEW_PLANETS_COLONIZATION_BOOST (default 0.25). When owned planets < threshold, colonization weight is multiplied by 1 + (threshold - owned) * boost.

• UNDERDEVELOPED_PLANET_LIMIT is now a soft weight penalty (limit / count multiplier) applied inside ColonizePlanets rather than a binary rejection in ShouldColonizePlanet, and no longer gated behind AI_BUDGETING_*_YEARS.

• The "optional" flag on an economic plan subplan now truly exempts it from plan fulfillment. Previously it only controlled the order in which the subplan was factored into the scaling-subplan loop, but the subplan's income/pops/naval_cap still counted toward graduation targets. If your mod relied on the old behavior to force pop or strategic-resource gates, change those subplans from optional = yes to omit the flag entirely, or add an equivalent requirement via a new non-optional subplan.

• New define AI_ZONE_SPECIALIZATION_AFFINITY_DELTA (default 0.5) in common/defines/00_defines.txt. This is the minimum affinity improvement a candidate zone must offer over the existing district specialization before the AI will propose a swap. Raising it makes the AI more reluctant to restructure existing zones; lowering it makes the AI more aggressive about perfecting specialization.

• Colony type ai_building_set_affinity entries now also apply to district specialization types. Any district specialization whose included_building_sets list includes a building set named in the colony's affinity table will receive the corresponding AI weight multiplier.

• Added the -logempirestats command-line flag. When set, Stellaris writes one TSV row per (month, empire) to logs/empire_stats_.tsv with columns Game Date, Empire, Plan, Economy, Military, Tech. Covers every playable empire (including the player) for the full session; dead empires keep a row per tick with blank metric cells.

• Added a resource_stockpile_percent = { resource = value >= } trigger. Only valid for resources that have caps.

• New define AI_ZONE_SWAP_BUILDING_LOSS_PENALTY (default 0.2) in common/defines/00_defines.txt. Each existing building in the slot that can't be carried over via included_building_sets subtracts this much from the candidate zone's effective affinity. With the 0.2 affinity delta default, a 1.5 -> 2.0 swap tolerates up to 2 displaced buildings but refuses at 3 or more. Raise to protect developed planets; lower to let the AI restructure more aggressively.

• New define AI_ZONE_SWAP_RATCHET_MULT (default 1.5) in common/defines/00_defines.txt. Multiplier applied to AI_ZONE_SPECIALIZATION_AFFINITY_DELTA when the slot is already occupied by a specialized zone (affinity > 1.0). First-time swaps from a baseline 1.0 zone use the normal delta; swaps that would displace an already-specialized zone need a larger margin. Prevents ratcheting between near-equivalent specialized candidates.

• New define AI_ZONE_SWAP_MIN_BUILD_WEIGHT (default 2.0) in common/defines/00_defines.txt. Minimum CalcBuildWeight a zone-swap proposal must reach before it's queued - any swap whose economic delta doesn't clear this floor is discarded even if the affinity delta would otherwise allow it. Prevents slot churn where multiple candidates cluster near the top and the AI keeps swapping for marginal improvements.

• Added `bottomless` flag for resource converters.

• Added `pop_group_can_join_factions` game rule. Pop groups are no longer hard coded to have happiness to join factions.

• The -incrementalsaves command line parameter will now save every 25 years instead of skipping some. This frequency can be changed by the INCREMENTAL_SAVE_FREQUENCY define.

• Added completion_message_type, completion_message_localization, and completion_message_days fields to scripted actions. When set, the engine automatically sends a notification to the acting player on action completion, with FLEET/MEGASTRUCTURE and TARGET_PLANET/TARGET_SYSTEM/TARGET_FLEET variables pre-populated.

• save_global_event_target_as supports exhibits.

• save_global_event_target_as logs an error if used in invalid scope.

• New on_leaving_system_fleet on_action that gets triggered when a fleet is leaving the system.

• no more errors in the error log about invalid scope when "any_" or "count_" triggers finds no matching elements. It used to evaluate the nested triggers using the parent scope and now it uses an empty version of the correct child object.

• Added error logging if failed to randomly place a system with minimum distance from other systems or if the minimum distance is 0.

• Added error logging to move_system corresponding to the logging in spawn_system.

• Added show_in_build_menu = yes|no (default yes) for megastructure types. When set to no, the megastructure is excluded from the Build Megastructure picker dialog and suppresses the picker button entirely if no other megastructures are available.

• Orbital deposit spawn eligibility unified under canonical can_have_* scripted triggers.

• Added force_show_diplomacy and force_show_espionage, letting you forcefully display a scoped country's respective tab through script.

• New `create_random_fleet` effect with weighted ship designs and optional min/max per entry; the previous deterministic effect of the same name has been renamed to `create_balanced_fleet`.

• Tradition Swaps now support "unlocks_agenda" as an optional field. If you don't have one entered, it will use the one from the base tradition (if any).

• Updated GetPlanetMoon to work for Habitats, Ringworlds, and Arkships

• Renamed system_colony script lists to system_planet_colony.

• Added `level_tooltip` to Starbase Levels, this displays as a custom tooltip appended to the Upgrade/Downgrade starbase tooltips.

• Added `is_orbital_ring = yes|no` to ship sizes, this determines if the Starbase Upgrade/Downgrade button title displays "Starbase" or "Orbital Ring"

• Added `show_in_outliner` parameter to situation type

• Fixed "calc = pop_happiness" in scaled_modifier not working.

• `num_claims_on_system = { target = FROM count >= 6 }

• Introduced a new define SYSTEM_BUILD_AREA_COLOR to control what color should be used to highlight eligible space when picking a spot to build certain megastructures.

• Add has_contract and has_contract_of_type triggers

• A fleet scripted action with planet scope and cooldown 0 will now be ordered for the whole system when used from galaxy map

• Replaced defines BRANCH_OFFICE_COST_INCREASE_MIN_RANGE and BRANCH_OFFICE_COST_INCREASE_SCALE with BRANCH_OFFICE_INFLUENCE_COST_BASE, BRANCH_OFFICE_INFLUENCE_COST_INCREASE_SCALE and BRANCH_OFFICE_INFLUENCE_MAX_COST.

• Added country_branch_office_influence_cost_mult modifier.

• Add carries_colony requirement to special projects

• new carrier_is_type trigger

• Add script list effects and triggers for owned_mission and issued_mission

• Add issuer event targets from mission scope

• inherits_capped_modifiers_from has been removed from the game. It is replaced by shared_capacity_modifier which is now a pool that all districts on the planet share their capacity from. Allowing for new modding possibilities

• Add show_in_issue_list parameter to mission category

• has_cloaking_detection works on starbase scope now

• Add click_to_act_key field to scripted actions, displayed when they are clickable. If not written, a generic click text will try to get generated, based on scope

• Add has_mission_flag trigger to mission scope

• Add is_contract_type trigger to mission scope

• Allow add_mission_counter to be used directly in a mission scope

• Added on_megastructure_build_start on action.

• Trigger has_cloaking_detection now takes modifiers into account

• Megastructures can't have build and dismantle times \\<= 0

• Add ship_size_damage_factor modifier

• Add triggered_requirement field to special projects

• Add is_nomadic government restriction

• Add is_nomadic country trigger

• Allow ship and fleet scope in set_graphical_culture effect

• Hooked on_actions for encampment and packing up from code

• Replaced is_moving trigger by is_system_locked

• New on_action on_system_locked_ship_killed fired when an encamped ship is killed

• Add can_access_decisions rule to show or hide the Decisions button

• Add time_to_accept and time_to_complete to missions

• Added custom_class_text_color as a hero ship parameter to determine which color highlight to use for the ship class on the fleet UI.

• Add create_sector effect for orphan colonies

• Added planet_artificial_max_districts_add which increases the district cap on colonies for which the planet class has is_artificial_planet = yes

• Add galaxy_radius trigger

• Removed on_fail effect for missions, on_cancel effect is now run when a mission is ended early, no matter the reason.

• `damage_ship` now supports passing the attacker country

• Added steal_planet_output effect

• Added potential trigger for situation types

• Planet decisions now support `important=yes` setting. Important decisions will appear at the top of the list and be be highlighted.

• Replaced has_authority = auth_corporate with is_megacorp = yes

• Deposits' potential, resources, and drop_weight now support astral rift scope.

• Updated deposits documentation.

• Replaced right_horizontal_slider with bottom_horizontal_slider, which correctly uses a horizontal button.

• Starbase scope now supports "ship" to scope to the station ship.

• scripted actions now support more on_actions along their process

• Updated `potential` and `possible` triggers for megastructures to include the constructing fleet or upgrading megastructure as a scope.

• Created a resource converters database used to handle stockpile alternate paying methods for a country

• Created `set_resource_converter` effect to set a country's resource converter

• Added construction_capabilities to ship size.

• Added error logging for unsupported values of "station" in deposit types.

• Removed obsolete game rule can_build_military_station_around.

• Megastructure definitions now support three new optional fields: tooltip_best_systems_header (loc key for the section header), tooltip_system_score (used to rank systems), and tooltip_system_filter (trigger block to exclude ineligible systems). Set tooltip_show_star_resources = yes instead of tooltip_system_score to display the star's actual resource output as the ranking metric. The number of systems shown is controlled by the MEGASTRUCTURE_TOOLTIP_BEST_SYSTEMS_COUNT define (default 10).

• Added the `override_trade_restriction` resource-converter flag. When set to `yes` on a resource in a country's resource converter, that country can buy and sell the resource on the market regardless of income or galactic market access (the income/galactic-market gate is skipped, but `tradable_in_market` is still respected).

• Ethics now support `triggered_country_modifier` blocks for conditionally applied country modifiers.

• New weapon_component_template fields collateral_damage and collateral_range for AoE damage to nearby hostile ships on hit, inheriting the weapon's penetration and damage type modifiers.

• New weapon_component_template fields chain_damage, chain_range and chain_count for arc/bouncing damage that randomly selects a hostile ship within range of each previous bounce target.

• New attacker_ship parameter on the damage_ship scripted effect for full on-action scope attribution when the damage source is a known ship.

Stellar Engine​

Hi folks, Alfray Stryke here with our final Spinal Mount. As a reminder Spinal Mounts are modules that can be equipped onto Tier 3 Arkships that are designed to roughly be mobile kilostructures. The Stellar Engine allows you to inject dark matter into a star or gas giant, providing a significant increase to the output.

After injecting dark matter into a star, it will gain an additional energy or physics research deposit, depending on the current output of the star. Stars without a deposit will default to gaining a physics research deposit. Of course, as a Settled empire, if you happen to know of any Nomadic empires that has an Arkship outfitted with one of these Spinal Mounts, you can issue a Contract for them to Ignite a star or gas giant in one of your systems.

Igniting a gas giant on the other hand, turns it into a protostar with a unique energy and physics producing deposit, but this has some drastic consequences to the local moons.

Nomads Achievements​

As usual, we have a few new achievements for you to chase.

Khan of Khans

As Heirs of the Khan, seize back your throne and have at least 5 Satrapy Vassals.

Forever is a Long Time

As Forever Cruise, survive for at least 200 years and reach the End Game Crisis.

The Long Way Round

As Sacred Path, complete the pilgrimage to all seven Sacred Sites.

Take My Energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Cook a homeworld with a Stellar Cannon.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Embark when your homeworld is at 70% devastation.

I Win Longest Road!

Connect 2 Capital Planets with a Wayline that is at least 20 Waystations long.

It's Full of Stars

As a Nomadic empire, settle on Europa as your Empire's Capital.

Defenders of the Galaxy

Defeat all End Game Crises before abdicating as DotG without ever having any non-Arkship colonies.

Community Q&A​

We’re holding a Question and Answer session today on the official Stellaris Discord. Come ask us anything about Stellaris!

Next Week​

Next week’s dev diary will be looking at the first few days of the 4.4 release and likely include a preview of our planned week 1 patch. (And a review of hotfixes, if any occurred.) See you then!

The artists put together a new piece of wallpaper for you based on the blueprints in the Arkship view.

Hello, Stellaris Community! Nomads releases on June 15th - less than two weeks from now - so I hope you’re planning your first playthroughs. Today we’re going to take a look at the Stellar Cannon, the new civics, and the prescripted empire we’re adding with Nomads. Iggy also has a little bonus with some species traits. Let’s go!

Stellar Cannon​

Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here to talk to you about our newest megastructure, the Stellar Cannon.

A purely offensive megastructure, buildable by Settled Empires as long as they have an available system with either a neutron star or a pulsar. It requires no Ascension to research either.

Once constructed, starting from level 1, its functionality remains roughly the same through all 3 levels. First, you prepare for Stellar Devastation.

Pushing this, unfortunately not red, button will move your into the galaxy view with a targeting reticle you might find familiar if you have used the Quantum Catapult before.

Then, all you need to do is target a system you find particularly bothersome.

Once the target has been confirmed, the Stellar Cannon will start its charge-up phase, opening a wormhole to the target and beginning the 140 day long countdown. During this time, you will be able to see a stunning visual effect in the target system.

If you wish for any of your ships in that system to survive, that's the moment to run. Or pray that your enemy is broke.

Let's talk about the math. How much does it cost to fire the Stellar Cannon? Everything.

It uses up your entire energy stockpile and fires that at the enemy system. The conversion to damage scales with your Cannon level, with the first level giving you 1 damage for 100 energy spent.

Once the charge-phase is up, the damage is applied to every single ship in the system. In addition, it will also deal devastation to every colony in the system, scaling with the stellar cannon level, 10%, 25%, 50%.

Should your shot use more than 50000 energy, you will also increase the temperature of all planets in the system, moving them one step up the dryness scale like Barren to Molten or Arctic to Ocean. Mind you, this will not move a planet out of being habitable or into being habitable.

Shots fired at this level will also trigger being in breach with the Terraforming resolutions of the Galactic Community. Long Range Terraforming is still Terraforming.

Now, obviously, being shot at will trigger opinion penalties with the shooter and give you an alert, just in case you missed being shot. In addition, using the Stellar Cannon will carry smaller penalties with everyone, because actually using it is kinda terrifying to the rest of the galaxy.

Now let us talk about restrictions. The Stellar Cannon’s main restriction is its inability to target systems with your own colonies in them. While it has a significant charge up phase, it has only a small cooldown between shots, because it uses up all of your energy. You are however free to acquire more energy to fire again. I would suggest asking your local megacorp for a loan for the purpose of high-intensity Terraforming.

In addition, the AI has a few more restrictions, in that it will only target enemies if it has more than 10000 energy in storage, has a positive energy balance and will only target systems with fleets that have more that piddling fleetpower, mainly so they won’t waste their entire energy budget on shooting single ship reinforcements.

It will also be more likely to target you if you insult it, especially if your insult is extra creative.

Civics​

Hey everyone, Cosmogone again, here to show you around the new civics coming with the DLC.

Let’s start with the simpler ones:

These civics are pretty straightforward, and give you some modifiers to bolster a playstyle or roleplaying fantasy.

Caravan Masters, Flight Schools, and Hired Guns are available for both regular and corporate nomad empires, while Deep Sleep has versions for all nomad empires.

Star Seekers looks more closely at the cultural impact of being a traveling civilization, and will encourage you to travel around while gathering supplies, before triggering an up to 6 month long celebration across your Arkships, burning all your hoard in joyful revels.

A festival will quickly deplete your Operational Reserve, so make sure that you have the means to fill it back up afterwards. It will immobilize one of your arkships, as you encamp for the duration of the festivities, letting your people spread through the system.

Void Reavers is the Nomads take on the pirate fantasy, and leaves you free to play it subversively or more directly, by either leeching off resources through your waystations, or straight up bombarding colonies to plunder them. It is only available to regular empires.

The Pirate Hideout will be the cornerstone of your operations, silently siphoning off a small fraction of the resources produced from any colony in the system. Though discreet, this will of course not be tolerated for long by your victims, so take good care of keeping your stations concealed if you wish to avoid war… for now.

The Reaver Stronghold is meant to be the hidden heart of your pirate dominion. Harder to keep secret, it will fortify your station, and double the efficiency of your hideouts. I personally like to build them tucked away in remote nebulas.

Finally, the more direct approach of mugging your neighbors out of their lunches can be achieved through the Plundering bombardment stance, which will let you squeeze every last morsel of valuable resources out of juicy planets. While it won’t be much out of backwater colonies, it should prove substantial if you can manage to hit a capital or better, an ecumenopolis.

Nomadic Species Traits​

Hey all, Iggy here! One thing we have seen in a lot of science fiction over the years is species moving to Zero-G or reduced gravity housing fundamentally changing compared to their original species, and that was a fantasy we decided to explore in Nomads. That’s right, actual secret buff to Evolutionary Predators, new species traits!

Blorg-El was born under a brown dwarf, only after flying to a pulsar was their true potential unlocked​

Any of the traits explicitly mentioning Arkships are only available to species with the Arkship Habitability. Many of the other traits, such as Reaver and Photoadaptive, are available to all. In addition there are Machine variants of most of these traits.

Settling and Embarking​

If there is anything we can learn from looking around in Sci-Fi it’s that Nomads often want to go somewhere, and when they get there they want to stay. As the premier enabler of your Science Fiction fantasies we here in Studio Green will let you Settle and Embark!

Touchdown!​

We filled the Databank with multiple new entries for Nomadic gameplay, so that seems like a great way to start. As mentioned there, if you wish to Settle you should look to your traditions. After finishing Adaptability or Versatility, you can settle, as long as you have found an empty planet. Is that planet already occupied? Simply dislodge them with the war system mentioned in the last Dev Diary.

Mareid will be nice eventually. We hope.​

As a settling Nomad you will have up to 3 options:

• Settle with this Arkship, leaving the rest of the ships to a Subject

• Settle with all the Arkships, putting all the pops in one place

• Stay in space, while this Arkship Settles and becomes a Settled Subject

Now from the other perspective things are quite similar!

It’s pricey to Embark!​

Embarking costs the same as building an Arkship and it has very similar logic to Settling.

The Databank is Love.​

Same logic here:

• If you have a single planet, you become Nomadic and all your existing starbases become Waystations.

• If you have multiple planets, you leave behind a Vassal or the Nomad is the vassal.

And yes. This is the perfect solution for Doomsday Empires.

Run awayyy!​

The Hyacinth Found​

Greetings people of Earth! Over a century ago, you launched the Ulysses Initiative, a grand project in which you sent 1.5 million people into space aboard multiple Arkships. We of the Hyacinth were scattered away from our sister ships, and only thanks to the great leadership of the great Captain Gundersen did we survive. We now fly through the stars under Arch-Surveyor Bjørn Gundersen's guidance.

Eaten by cannibals? What nonsense are you talking about?​

You have produced scientists and explorers willing to build and crew Arkships before, and we suspect you still do. The doors of our Society are open to anyone who still carries that spirit and wishes to explore the galaxy with us. Now we must leave, for we have discovered Clues of the Chrysanthemum.

Unity calls.​

The Gundersen Research Society is a Materialistic, Xenophilic, Authoritarian empire. In that order. They respect and treasure knowledge above all else, they don’t care where this knowledge comes from as long as the discoverer acknowledges the Gundersen line. I hope you enjoy having a new humanity added to the games canon, even if it’s more of a ‘what if’ situation here.

Exodus Jump​

Alfray checking in to report on the progress of our research into the Exodus Jump Coordinator. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, it’s limited to the gravity well of our galaxy and cannot escape it (but maybe one day…)

Where we’re going we won’t need roads hyperlanes…

Much like the Quantum Catapult, the Exodus Jump isn’t the most precise method of travel (though any modifiers that apply to Quantum Catapults will apply to the Exodus Jump as well).

For those of you with Astral Planes, this includes the Astral Calibration action.

Unlike other forms of point-to-point FTL travel, the space-time tear caused by the Exodus Jump is a tad untamed.

Maybe jumping into the Sol system as a test flight was a bad idea…

​

Next Week​

We’re almost done! Next week will be the preliminary release notes for the 4.4 ‘Pegasus’ update and Nomads, and we’ll be revealing our last spinal mount. See you then!

by Eladrin

Hello everybody! The team has been competing against one another to see who can write the longest dev diary, so I’m going to sabotage their efforts by keeping my preamble short. Let’s get straight into the fray!

Defender of the Galaxy​

Hi everyone! Cosmogone here to tell you more about the expansion of Defender of the Galaxy. For the past couple years, we have been adding new crisis paths to Stellaris, exotic ways of wrecking the galaxy, some more morally grey than others, but none that would let you be “The Good Guy” without lying to yourself. Building upon the crisis mechanics and systems, the reworked Defender of the Galaxy is what we call an Ambition; a new term to encompass paths that unlock specific victory conditions, be they harmful to the rest of the galaxy, or not.

Now with updated art!​

In terms of vision, Defender of the Galaxy is about being truly good. Being ready to sacrifice everything fighting so that others may live, and this principle is what has guided the rework. There are ways to play around that a bit, but overall, I wanted to reward players for cooperating and protecting other empires rather than encourage total galactic subjugation, and as such, DotG will come with several bonuses to being the Custodian, but will also prevent you from creating the Galactic Imperium.

To protect is to serve.​

As with the Crisis Paths, the Ascension Perk will become available after you have picked 3 other APs, and is inaccessible to genocidal empires, barbaric despoilers, crisis empires, fanatic xenophobes or inward perfection empires.

While the ambition does not outright prevent you from being a little evil, progressing through it will go faster if you can work together with the other empires of the galaxy, and eliminate any arising crisis with extreme prejudice, of course.

Never before have crisis empires looked so juicy.​

As you progress through the Ambition Levels, you can expect to unlock the old opinion modifiers and damage vs crisis empires, but also buffs to federations, the Galactic Community, diplomacy and defensive structures as a whole. Here are a few examples:

Your allies will give you the strength you need.​

After becoming the Custodian and creating the Galactic Defense Force, you will be able to begin the Paladin Initiative, eventually unlocking unique ships, manned by remarkable commanders. More than weapons of war, these ships and those who man them will stand as symbols of hope to inspire the rest of the galaxy and lead your forces to victory.

More than a ship, a symbol.​

They might not be as fearsome as a behemoth, but together with your fleets and the GDF, they are more than up to the task of slaying the beast.

A single paladin ship will not be a game changer, but with support and a stalwart commander, they will lead your forces to victory.​

Paladin ships have many unique abilities, the basic ones being the Paladin Aegis, which fortifies the paladin ship in battle, the Lance of Valor, which deals damage scaling with your diplomatic weight, and Recall which lets a paladin ship retreat from a dangerous situation. Additionally, the ship will receive a 4th ability depending on the leader commanding them and can unlock a fifth one through resolutions in the Galcom. You will be limited to building only one paladin ship, but every member of the galactic council will also be able to choose their paladin, and should the situation be grave enough, the galactic custodian has the power to assume direct command of all paladins in order to defend the galaxy.

The Galcom will be an important tool to defend the galaxy.​

A commander will be promoted to Paladin upon being assigned to their new ship, and receive a new leader trait, as well as a class trait. They can be retrained to receive the class of your choice, but that is an expensive option.

Paladin, ready to serve!​

So, how do I win as a Defender of the Galaxy? Simple! Reach level 5 of the ambition, defeat two end game Crises, make sure no other crisis empires are left alive, then abdicate your custodianship. After all, with no looming threats, there is no moral reason to hold onto the extraordinary powers you have been granted. There is still good to be done, but you won’t need to stand above your peers to do it. Oh and for the more impatient ones in the crowd, you will be able to risk it all and bring forth the end game crisis early in order to complete your ambition. And if you’re bold enough, you might just see two of them at the same time.

Origin: Heirs of the Khan​

Hi there. I am Iggy, and I know what fuels you. Not to be the ‘good guys’ saving the galaxy. Not taking care of demanding passengers or discovering your spiritual roots out in the galaxy. No, what truly drives you is revenge. In Heirs of the Khan, you were once a member of a Marauder community. After endless service, it was finally your people's turn to lead the united clans. Only you were betrayed. Now, exiled, you have to avoid hunters.

In Marauder culture, revenge is served hot!​

One of the first things you will notice when starting your Heirs gameplay is a special military contract somewhere nearby in the galaxy. Similar to Forever Cruise, this is a unique contract for Heirs empires. It will be key that you complete these contracts whenever you can, for you see, the Marauders will be sending fleets after you. Bounty hunters who will only grow stronger each time you defeat them. By completing these contracts you will weaken them and survive to fight another day.

These Hunters might stay their fire if you ask nicely.​

These fleets will be a constant threat and opportunity for you until you reach the mid-game year. Instead of the event you are used to from Apocalypse you are instead involved in the process of selecting this new Khan, and it might be you.

It’s a very comfortable throne​ If you now manage to survive the overwhelming firepower of the Great Khan’s Vision and assembled fleets. You might just get to sound the Drums of War.

Just desserts.​

Now, being the Khan is hard work. You have to go out there and gather satrapies, and the other empires might not be happy to help you. Thankfully, your new Marauder friends will supply you with reinforcements, and you have access to civics and traits traditionally reserved for the Khan.

I hope your ruler doesn’t die.​

The galaxy might band together and try to stop you, but that is just because they don’t understand your great vision for the galaxy. As being the Khan is a full-time job, it is incompatible with other Ambitions like Defenders of the Galaxy and Behemoth Fury. But once you have survived the gauntlet that is the early game, you can be your own midgame crisis.

Take revenge on the galaxy!​

Military Arkship and Devastator Mount​

Alfray Stryke with another Intel Report on Arkships:

Military Arkship Tiers​

Unlike the other two Arkship classes, Military Arkships are outfitted for combat from the start of the game.

In lieu of gaining access to various abilities, Military Arkships have additional weapon slots that are automatically equipped with appropriate weapons.

As previously teased in other Dev Diaries, Arkship Systems allow you to equip the Arkship with a variety of Defensive and Utility Components from regular ships, including selected Auras from Juggernauts, Titans and Starbases.

In terms of Defensive Components, each of the below equips the Arkship with 3× Large (or Aux) version of the latest components from their respective category that you have researched. The Shield Amplifier and Ancient Shield Recharger instead provide Shield HP and Hardening instead of equipping components.

For example:

In addition to the Utility Modules we have been showing off, Arkships can also equip Weapon Modules, these equip an appropriate amount of turrets (depending on the turrets the weapons themselves use) automatically upgraded with your latest technology.

Of course, Arkships can’t be outdone by a Titan, so they have the Devastator Mount…

Which means I could build something like this

Arkships can have the full spectrum of Fleet Stances for their combat behaviour, but are always equipped with a combat computer with the unique Arkship Tactics.

Finally, all Arkships (except for those operated by the Forever Cruise) have the Ordinance Engineering district. This military district normally provides soldier jobs, but can be specialized with any of the following, depending on your unlocked technologies:

Finally, here’s some tables of detailed information on Arkship numbers:

Arkship Detail Tables

Base Stats by Tier (All Classes)​

Stat

Tier 1

Tier 2

Tier 3

Base HP

2,500

5,000

10,000

Base Armor

1,250

2,500

5,000

Base Shields

1,250

2,500

5,000

Base Shield Regen

4.375

8.75

17.5

Evasion

+5

+5

+5

Disengage Chance

2.0

2.0

2.0

Module Slots

2

4

7 (6 regular + spinal mount)

System Slots

2

4

8

Max Districts

9

18

27

Waystation Stockpile Collection Rate

+125

+375

+625

Max Speed

100

100

100

Size

80

100

120

Cost and Upkeep​

Tier

Alloys Cost

Influence Cost

Build Time

Upkeep (Alloys)

Upkeep (Energy)

Notes

T1

10,000

500

720 days

1.5

1.5

Built as megastructure by Arkships

T2

5,000

250

900 days

3

3

Upgraded using the Ship Controls tab.

T3

5,000

250

1,080 days

4.5

4.5

Upgraded using the Ship Controls tab.

Class-Specific Innate Modifiers​

Class

Tier

Sensor Range

Hyperlane Range

Class Bonus

Civilian

T1

+1

-

Harvest Produces +5%

T2

+1

-

Harvest Produces +10%

T3

+1

-

Harvest Produces +15%

Scientific

T1

+2

+1

Survey Speed +5%

T2

+3

+2

Survey Speed +10%

T3

+4

+3

Survey Speed +15%

Military

T1

+1

-

Fire Rate +5%, Weapon Range +5%

T2

+1

-

Fire Rate +10%, Weapon Range +10%

T3

+1

-

Fire Rate +15%, Weapon Range +15%

Innate Weapon Slots​

Class

Tier

Strike Craft

Medium Guns

Large Guns

PD

Civilian

T1

2

-

-

4

T2

4

-

-

8

T3

6

-

-

16

Scientific

T1

2

-

-

4

T2

4

-

-

8

T3

6

-

-

16

Military

T1

2

4

-

4

T2

4

4

4

8

T3

6

-

8

16

Actions​

Exploration and Harvesting​

Action

Cost

Activation Time

Cooldown

T1

T2 & T3

Requirements

Speed Modifier

Survey

-

60 days

-

All classes

All classes

Requires assigned leader

Survey speed

Deep Scan

500 energy

90 days

-

Module only

Scientific: innate; others: module

Advanced Sensor Array or Subspace Imaging Array

Survey speed

Subspace Imaging

10,000 energy

120 days × planets in system

1,800 days (5 years)

-

-

Subspace Imaging Array (spinal)

Survey speed

Harvest Resources

-

90 days

-

All classes

All classes

-

Action speed

Strip Mine

500 energy

180 days

-

Module only

Civilian: innate; others: module

Planetary Engineering Lab or Planetary Reprocessor

Action speed

Reprocess Planet

5,000 energy

720 days (2 years)

1,800 days (5 years)

-

-

Planetary Reprocessor (spinal)

Action speed

Now over to Gruntsatwork for how Nomadic wars function.

Nomadic Warfare​

Nomad on Everyone Violence​

Hello, I’m Gruntsatwork and today I get to talk about Warfare and Nomads. Without too much preamble, let’s jump right in. Arkships are colonies, however, as they are not planets they can not be bombarded, nor can they be invaded. If you wish to take out an Arkship, your only option is good old honest ship combat, because damage to their hull is equal to their devastation. So, does that mean I can conquer Arkships as a non-nomad and then cruise around? I’m afraid not. Even if Eladrin thinks it would be hilarious, Arkships will only ever be available to nomads. Neither can you use a conquer war goal against nomads as there is nothing to claim. For non-nomads the general flow will always be similar. Once you reduce an arkship to 0 hull, they will become disabled and drop out of combat. At that point, we intervene in the background. For normal empires, the Arkship will simply remain disabled until the war ends. Once the war concludes, we re-enable the Arkship, and it will be dealt with according to your war goal. If you are a genocidal empire type, you will immediately blow them up, leaving debris full of alloys. What about non-default empires, you ask? Critters, Leviathans, and similar creatures will disable your ship at 0 hull, and your Arkship will escape to a nearby safe system before re-enabling. End-game crises will destroy your Arkships, no exceptions. But what about the other way around, what about a nomad conquering a planet? You will not be able to make claims and conquer planets. You will be able to invade and occupy them, but like any proud nomad, you will release those filthy balls of dirt once the war concludes. Instead of conquering them, you can always vassalize the planet-dwellers, but what if you desire a more … permanent impact on them?

Genocidal Nomads or Nomads using total wars can not occupy planets; however, any planet they invade will immediately be split off into a vassal. These can be either proper vassals or aptly-named purge-vassals. Purge-Vassals are temporary existences who will only exist as long as it takes them to purge all pops on the planets you have conquered. Once they have finished purging, they will transfer over any resources they generated as well as passing on purge unique effects like Necrophages or Galactic Nemesis. For the keen-eyed, there is a case we have not covered yet: Nomad on Nomad Violence. Nomads are perfectly capable of taking over Arkships from other nomads. To achieve this we recommend the new Nomad Raid CB, which allows a nomad to take over any Arkship and Waystation that they have successfully disabled. In addition, nomads also have easier access to the Subjugation CB. As a reminder, normal empires need to be superior on average in all three values: economy, research, and military power. Nomads only need to be superior in military power to subjugate another empire. But what if I am a normal empire and one of those nomads is encroaching upon my borders? In that case, you will gain access to a new CB to expel them from your borders, which will delete all their waystations within your borders, move their ships out of your systems, and actually force them to respect your closed borders for the duration of the truce.

Champion's Forge LIIIIIVE!​

LITHOIDS, ORGANICS, AND WAR MACHINES ACROSS THE GALAXY - WELCOME BACK TO CHAMPION’S FORGE LIIIIIIIVE! Iggy is back as your presenter for the greatest show around. Our latest enclave is focused on delivering glorious free-for-all arena battles to entertain the galaxy.

Red and gold is classy.​

Like most enclaves, they have multiple purposes. However, they mainly specialize in lighting up the galaxy and forging legends! Every twenty years or so, they will invite the greatest forces to join in and prove themselves.

Good thing they are nomadic, cus they would make bad neighbors.​

Like any well-respected combat sport, the CFL has weight classes. Starting out in the early game, you can only send in highly optimized strike forces, however come late game, entire armadas can be pitted against each other. And worry not about losing your fleet, the CFL will ensure that most of the ships make it back.

We even get a cut of the commercials for winning!

The trophy is very shiny!​

Now, you will have to return the trophy when it’s time for the next tournament. Some of you might be thinking that if you shoot down the CFL before then you might get to keep it! Just know that I thought of that. As for the other services the CFL can offer:

• For the right price they will let you decide where the next tournament should be, this is excellent as you can prepare your fleet for combat in a pulsar and overwhelm everyone else.

• They are willing to sell combat data on your rivals.

• Finally, if you are a Nomad, then they are ready to introduce you to Nomadic Paragons.

Nomadic Paragons​

Hi, I am Nele (Content Designer), and it is my pleasure to present our new six Paragons arriving alongside the Nomads DLC: five are Renowned, and one is Legendary! All six are exclusive to nomadic empires, and you meet them through the Champion’s Forge Live! Enclave. Special thanks to Chad Inglis, our Managing Design Lead, for bringing them to life. Paragon Concept Art- Scott Austin, Art Director “The team always loves working on Paragons because they don't follow the same set rules of our typical portraits. They're a "one and done" type of deal, so we get to go all out on them. Paragons always have more character than typical species portraits with detailed backstory, etc., and that's what makes them so fun. Our Nomads Paragons come from all walks of life, everything from an eccentric archeologist to a former soldier, hell-bent on revenge. The one binding factor being that they are all, in one way or another, part of the Nomads. We see this in their diverse wardrobes and outward appearances. Less uniforms and more in-world clothing.”

Orun Veyth, the Revenant

Orun is a scarred admiral whose homeworld was purged. They hunt the instigators of their planet’s annihilation with patience, and every purger they defeat tightens their oath into something even more powerful, stacking their trait with each victory.

Their combat trait grows stronger with every fleet battle won against a purge-committed empire. This implies that Orun is a paragon whose career performance depends on the galaxy remaining terrible. So far, the galaxy has not let them down.

"Show me the butchers, and I will return their cruelty tenfold."

Orun Veyth Concept Art - Scott Austin, Art Director

“For Orun Veyth, (working name the Revenant) we explored several of our species and both male and female before landing on the final species of choice.”

“For the longest time, they had a rifle with which they would snipe these evildoers who had committed genocide on their planet. We eventually decided to go with a blade weapon so they would get their revenge up close and personal.”

Ashar, the Wandering Sage

Ashar is a robed wanderer who held a senior counselor's seat at a royal court for many years, then walked away from it to chase wisdom. She teaches that "truth must remain in motion," and the Arkships are the first ships fast enough to keep up with them. Convenient, isn’t it? Ashar wanders the stars, teaching that “true wisdom flows like starlight through the void”. If that sentence made you want to write it down somewhere permanent, congratulations: you are now one of Ashar's students.

"The one who carries nothing bears all things."

Ashar’s Concept Art - Felix Englund, Concept Artist

“Ashar was one of the most fun briefs I’ve worked with since I started on Stellaris. It’s right up my alley of interests, and it’s probably my favorite portrait I’ve done so far!

As the brief suggested, wisdom and mystery are at the heart of this character design. I wanted to design her with thick traveling robes, playing into the traveler and eclectic vibe, and give her oriental and gothic jewelry and clothing resembling a ribcage, playing into the necroid origin, as well as a ceremonial and spiritual touch. Early ideas included larger ribcages, larger scrolls, and other necroid species, but as we reviewed my sketches, it was clear that the team was on board with going for the human necroid look.”

Sero the Younger, the Naturalist

Sero the Younger walked out of a Grand Archive because he decided to research living and thriving things instead. Sero will bring 300 living specimens aboard your capital Arkship the day he signs on, and his deep scans reveal what ordinary surveys miss.

A scientist who walked out of a prestigious lifelong post because everything in it was already dead. Honestly: mood.

"To study life, one must walk beside it."

Sero the Younger Concept Art - Lloyd Drake-Brockman, Concept Artist

Unit Solace, the Caregiver

A synthetic father who chose exile over leaving his fragile son behind while his people ascended. His special trait Life in Motion increases research speed under Solace's patient instruction, and your researchers grow a little sharper and a little better cared for with every lesson he gives.

Solace is, without question, the most wholesome paragon. We dare you to dismiss him, you heartless monster. You can't. You won't.

"Life endures, and when we choose to care, it thrives."

Unit Solace’ Concept Art - Cassandra Lindquist, 2D UI Artist

“With the pitch being “A dad robot and his sick son" I wanted to make sure everything revolved around the sick child and I had the idea very early to have him "hooked up" to the dad as a type of life support. I also played around with equipment for the dad that could help the child, like carriers, sun protection, comforting plushies, medical kits etc.

It was challenging since it was my first attempt at a character, but it was fun to figure out how to portray a robot dad, caring for his little sick bio child.

I had fun conversations like "Does the dad wear clothes? Can we give him facial expressions? can a robot have more of a robust dad bod? Does it make sense? Do we care if it doesn't make sense?" and we ended up making him more Baymax shaped.”

Special shoutout to Mia for this magnificent rig! Did you notice the little plushie the child is holding?

Mia Svensson, Animator: “The rig was built and animated with this relationship, that Cassie \ described, in mind, to make the kid feel physically connected to the dad, but also the other way around. A wholesome symbiosis between human and machine.”

Th'aal Hask'Guron, the Champion

Th'aal is a rather joyful warrior who treats every battlefield like a hunt for trophies. Speaking of, Th'aal will fill a Trophy Hall on your Arkship if you let him, and every piece on display strengthens your armies. This is the kind of momentum that carries the troops through a long war.

Also, doesn't the beast around his shoulders look rather familiar? We are not sure its kin appreciates it.

"The void takes everything in time, so fight hard and laugh while you can!"

Th'aal Hask'Guron’s Concept Art - Felix Englund, Concept Artist

“As the brief suggested a big, bulky and very jolly warrior, I wanted the paragon Th’aal to reflect that in many ways.The first iterations didn’t feel quite right, and we adjusted the brief early to find a more appropriate and fun species to work with. The idea here was to have the facial expression and the stance looking confident and joyful, not only menacing. I dressed him up in a champion's outfit with gold belts and details as well as a robe with a trophy carried on his shoulder. His weapons are clearly meant for melee combat, but it’s something he carries with him to emphasize his dominance in combat. Early on I played with different elements such as more skulls and bones before I ended up choosing to stay with the boar trophy and his skull helmet. It felt less on the nose and more grounded in the character.“

Seralune, the Lost Princess \

Seralune steps onto your bridge and politely requests passage. She is the youngest of our new paragons but she is already remarkably accomplished.

She possesses the Amnesiac trait and the story chain that grows out of it. As time passes, scraps of memory will surface such as a strange feeling, a familiar name, and perhaps even the silhouette of a system she swears she has seen before. Seralune will mark places in the galaxy that pull at her, and if your Arkship is willing to go where she points, you may begin to learn what she lost.

You will, despite yourself, find yourself rooting for the lost princess. We can't wait to see where you take her, but you'd better keep her safe from the dangers that await out there, especially since the rewards for aiding Seralune in reclaiming her scattered past are rather extensive.

"Somewhere in the endless sweep of stars, a voice is calling me home."

Seralune’s Concept Art - Scott Austin, Art Director

“Our earliest brief had this character as royalty but it wasn’t yet locked in whether or not they would be a male or female, only that they were dethroned and in exile. My very first sketches were of an older, sweet and appealing character. I still like this character and hope that we can get her in somewhere else…”

“I really wanted to stick with our classic Orange and Teal color palette. So that was prominent for a quite a while.”

“I did, however, explore several other options. The main point we wanted to stick to were that they clearly were of a royal background and had a commanding presence to them. A character that you would want to see back on the throne. And we wanted them to clearly be part of our nomad faction. I think all in all, I did several dozen character options (there will be a Nomads Art Blast later). One of the clear standouts was the momentary idea of using our orc species as a base.”

“Before eventually going back to my very first orange and teal sketches and working those further into what became our final princess.” We all hope you have lots of fun with these characters! That's it! Until next time. :)

Stellaris 10 Year Anniversary Merch Store​

One of the common questions I’d get is “where can I get one of those Stellaris bomber jackets you guys wear?”, and we’d always point them to the Paradox careers page. That answer is still correct, but we have a tenth anniversary one up for preorder on our official 10th Anniversary Merchandise Store. The store also has a new Blorg Body Pillow, pins, magnets, hoodies, a Swolefin beach towel, playing cards, a glow-in-the-dark Rick the Cube poster, and more, so check it out!

Next Week​

We’re getting closer to release, so next week we’ll be covering the Stellar Cannon, the Civics of Nomads, the Exodus Jump Spinal Mount, how Embarking or Settling works, and we’ll hunt for our new Prescripted Empire. See you then!

by Eladrin

Hello everyone! Today the team will be going over some of the general gameplay differences you’ll see when playing a Nomadic empire. After going over the fine print of Nomad Contracts, we’ll take a luxury trip on the Forever Cruise, look over the newest model of Civilian Arkships and Logistics Ships, harvest some resources, reprocess some unnecessary planetoids, build some kilostructures, and examine our Arkship’s operation reserves and infrastructure. Let’s get moving!

Contracts​

I’m PDX_Ferry and I’m here to talk about Contracts and the Forever Cruise origin. Contracts let settled empires outsource work to nomads. Need hostile space fauna cleared from a system? Resources harvested? A third party to join your wars? Issue a Contract! They come in four categories: Military, Science, Resource, and Diplomacy, and cost Trade to issue.

Right-click a system to issue contracts​

From the nomad side, contracts are a way to earn income. Accept a contract, send your Arkship to the location, complete the work, and collect the Trade reward.

A Waystation in this system will benefit us both.​

Some contracts require that you complete one or more special projects, perform Arkship fleet orders like Harvest Resources, or bombard planets in the Raid Planet contract. Completed contracts reward you with increasing amounts of trade and also improve Opinion and Trust with the issuer, opening the door to Wayline Pacts and deeper diplomacy.

Right-click a system, pick a contract, and let a nomad handle it.​

Let’s take a simple example: as an issuer, the Clear Blockers contract lets you remove all natural planetary blockers from a colony without researching the necessary technologies. As long as a nomadic empire in the galaxy has researched the new Planetary Engineering tech, the contract becomes available for you to issue.

Can you have it done by Monday?​

On the nomad side, you fly an Arkship to the system, complete a special project, and collect the reward. Nomadic empires are limited to one contract per Arkship, but with the ability to build more Arkships it's possible to accept more contracts.

And we would appreciate getting paid on time.​

Nomads have new Focus Tasks, some related to contracts and some to other parts of the nomadic experience, and modified Focus Progression steps. The Progression Tiers have also been adjusted for all empires to make it easier to reach the highest tiers.

Nomadic Focus Tasks

Arkship upgrade techs as guaranteed research options.​

You can read more on contracts and other nomadic topics in the Databank by using the new Nomads DLC text filter.

Extra, extra, read all about it! ​

Origin: Forever Cruise​

Welcome to the Forever Cruise! Your suite is ready, the zero-gravity sucrose fountain is operational, and the observation decks are open. Nebulae to witness, alien shores to visit, spectacles yet unimagined. Our crew exists to make it happen.

Forever is a long time, especially towards the end.​

The Forever Cruise begins with two species on one Arkship. The Crew is your primary species, who fills every working role on the ship. The Passengers are your secondary species: a class of leisure-seekers that generate Unity at a steep Consumer Goods cost. The Crew part can be a regular empire, a Hive Mind, or Machine Intelligence, including a special variant of Rogue Servitor.

Error 301: Guest permanently moved to the spa.​

At the heart of the Forever Cruise is a question that never goes away: who does this ship serve? The Passenger Satisfaction situation tracks this as a persistent tug-of-war. If passengers grow bored, the needle drifts toward Planetfall on the left. If the crew is overworked, it drifts toward Mutiny on the right. You start in the middle, in Cruising Steady, and your job is to keep it from reaching either extreme.

Forget the crisis. This bar is your real endgame threat.​

Both sides of the ship issue their own Contracts, which are internal demands that affect the direction that the Passenger Satisfaction situation moves. Passenger Contracts are about entertainment while Crew Contracts are about maintenance and stress relief. The Forever Cruise can also complete regular contracts issued by other empires, but remember that passengers are so used to entertainment that a Harvest Resource contract will bore them.

Satisfy one side, disappoint the other.​

The Forever Cruise introduces the unique Service District, which has district specializations for the Crew or Passengers. The Habitation Decks (City District) can be specialized as a Fabrication Deck for the crew, an Observation Deck for passengers, or a Utility Deck for both. The origin adds eight unique buildings, for example the Passenger Estates, which increase your First Class Passenger capacity, and the Enrichment Labs, which turn passengers into amateur researchers.

No hypothesis, no method, no rigor. Somehow, results.​

For the crew side, buildings like the Holo-Production Studios churn out passenger fantasies on demand, which boosts Entertainers. The Crew Coordination Center unlocks the Activity Manager, a new Elite Stratum job that boosts Worker and Specialist output across the Arkship.

I see you're mid-repair of the hull breach, but have you logged this task in the tracking system?​

But push the situation too far in either direction and it is over. With Planetfall, the passengers force you to settle, which turns you into a regular settled empire. With Mutiny, the crew revolts and demands government changes. Both outcomes strip away everything that makes the Forever Cruise unique. Can you keep the cruise running forever?

Civilian Arkship and Planetary Reprocessor​

Alfray Stryke is back with another Intel Report on Arkships:

Civilian Arkship Tiers​

If Scientific Arkships are meant to explore the galaxy and find uncharted wonders, Civilian Arkships are industrial powerhouses meant to refine those wonders into something useful.

Selecting a Civilian Arkship in Empire creation.​

Now the keen-eyed amongst our community may have noticed that the Voidfarers origin grantsArkship Action Speed: +20%. This applies to all of the special Fleet Orders we’ll be detailing today, but not the Deep Scan and Subspace Image orders from last week, since those use Survey Speed modifiers. The primary Fleet Orders these will apply to belong to the category of Harvesting Actions: These actions share some common features:

• They target celestial objects that are NOT a star or habitable world.

• They harvest resources depending on local resource deposits

• Depending on the planet class of the targeted celestial object, they harvest additional resources.

• The amount of harvested resources depends on the size of the deposits.

• Although Nomadic Empires start the game with the Strategic Extraction technology, additional technologies can be researched to improve the harvesting of strategic and rare resource deposits.

• Harvesting resources in owned systems will have diplomatic consequences with the system owner.

• After harvesting has been completed, the celestial object has the Resource Depletion modifier applied to it for a number of years (depending on the action used).

  • This prevents another harvesting action while it is present.

  • Reduces Resources from Mining Stations in orbit of the celestial object by 75%

  • Can be removed by Deep Scanning the celestial object.

​

Planet Class​

Resources Harvested​

Asteroid (Ice)​

Energy, Rare Crystals​

Asteroid (Rocky)​

Minerals, Volatile Motes​

Barren World​

2× Minerals​

Frozen World​

2× Rare Crystals​

Gas Giant​

2× Exotic Gases​

Molten World​

2× Volatile Motes​

Toxic World​

2× Exotic Gases​

Table of Common Planet Classes and Resources yielded by Harvesting Actions. We’ll leave it to you to discover what resources other planets yield.​

• Harvest Resources

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 100%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 20 Years

  • Available to Arkships and Logistic Ships

    • Arkships harvest directly into the empire stockpile.

    • Logistic Ships harvest into their local stockpile.

• Planetary Strip Mining

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 250%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 50 Years

  • Requires the Arkship satisfies one of the following requirements:

    • Is a Civilian Arkship of Tier 2 or 3.

    • Is equipped with a Planetary Engineering Bay Module

    • Is equipped with a Planetary Reprocessor Spinal Mount

• Planetary Reprocessing:

  • Resource Harvesting Efficacy: 600%

  • Resource Depletion Duration: 200 Years

  • Target is converted into a Shattered World with all current deposits removed.

  • Requires the Arkship have a Planetary Reprocessor Spinal Mount

​

Deposit Size​

Resources from Deposit​

Resources from Planet Class​

0 (or unsurveyed)​

0​

25​

1​

50​

25​

2​

75​

75​

3​

150​

150​

4​

250​

250​

5​

375​

375​

Both Arkships and Logistic Ships can be automated much like Science and Construction Ships, but with a few different options.

Arkship Automation Settings

Logistic Ship Automation Settings​

As a reminder, when collecting resources from a Waystation (or Wayline) Stockpile, Logistic Ships add the resources to their internal Stockpile and have to deliver them to an Arkship in order for these resources to be used. If a Logistic Ship has Automation enabled, whenever its Stockpile reaches around 10% free capacity, it’ll automatically route to the nearest Arkship to drop off the resources and then resume the Automated orders. The automation system (which also applies to the AI usage of harvesting) has been configured for the following ​

Condition​

Increase Target Weight​

Decrease Target Weight​

Target yields resources in demand​

​

Deposit size​

(Weight increases with deposit size)​

Target is Unsurveyed​

​

​

System is owned by friendly empire​

​

​

If resources have been harvested, the deposits will appear in orange in both the system and galaxy view.

When a harvesting action is selected in the fleet UI, all valid targets will be shown in the system view and the resource icons will swap to showing what resources will be gained if that target is selected.

If a harvesting action is ordered via the context menu on either the system or galaxy view, the tooltip will inform you of which resources will be gained.

Issuing the order via the context menu on the galaxy map will also queue the order for all valid targets in that system.

When a harvesting action is completed, the toast or notification will show the resources gained.

Nomadic Empires & MegaKilostructures​

Due to their highly mobile nature, Nomadic Empires cannot build Megastructures…

What are Habitats?​

…but they can build Kilostructures. The list of (non-Crisis Path) Megastructures that Nomadic Empires have access to are:

• Arc Furnaces (Machine Age)

• Dyson Swarms (Machine Age)

• Gateways

• Grand Archive (Grand Archive)

• Hyper Relays (Overlord)

• Quantum Catapults (Overlord)

• Waystations (Nomads)

All of these can be built by both Arkships and Logistic Ships. All requirements for Megastructure construction that require “Must own the System” for Settled Empires are instead changed to “System must be on a Wayline with a Tier 2 or 3 Waystation”.

Countless civilizations, however, cannot conceive of consigning their carefully curated collection of curiosities to some distant corner of the cosmos.​

Arkships can also build additional Arkships via the Megastructure Build Menu, which upon construction will automatically gain a new colony with 1,000 pops of your founder species. And now to pass onto GruntsAtWork to discuss our Economic Situation

Life on the Arkship​

Hello everyone, Gruntsatwork here. Let us talk about Life on an Arkship and its economic ramifications and the best way to start, in my opinion at least, is by taking a step back. One of our earliest design goals for Nomads was a relatively simple “Nomads should move”. It is incredibly self-evident, but it remained a challenge until the end to make sure we cleaved to that vision. Every mechanic we added had to either encourage this or at least not run counter to it. Our first mechanical step into this direction was simple and will also be the first thing you notice once you start playing a nomad empire. There are no mineral districts, so gaining minerals must be achieved through other means. This very neatly introduced a need for you to move to harvest minerals. Even neater it introduced our second big design problem and design decision. “Nomads should want to move”. Forcing you to move or perish was easy, but it felt empty, because the movement felt so forced. It led to testers moving as little as necessary and then sitting stationary for as long as possible. Some of the features you have already heard about came in to address both the need for minerals but also to make it feel more rewarding to be on the move and they worked quite nicely in our humble opinion. We however were left with a slight perception issue. There was an angry red number in your top-bar, telling you that you were losing and the more you built up your Arkship, the worse it got. All the actions that should lead you to success, like building up your research, your unity or your alloys, made the number angrier and redder. It became very apparent that simply not having an income in minerals was not enough. It didn’t feel like a new playstyle, it felt like an old playstyle but worse. We bashed our brightest design heads together and before you know it, we had the shape of a solution on paper. Operational Reserves.

For nomads, both energy and minerals are handled through the Operational Reserves Situation. This is the resources required for the Arkships day to day operations. Any energy or minerals that come in, go straight into your Reserves, any that go out, come straight from your Reserves.