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:
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.
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!