by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

We've got another update to the Wilderness Open Beta[forum.paradoxplaza.com] today, which fixes a number of significant multiplayer desynchronization issues, fixes some purging issues, adds yet more lathe fixes, more AI improvements, some economic balancing, and a couple of new Policies relating to Research.

Here's a list of today's changes:

Feature​​

• The Technological Ascendancy AP now unlocks research policies allowing you to increase the draw weight for technology categories

• Added Research Restriction policies, allowing you to massively reduce the chance of drawing dangerous technologies (for example if you want to use automated research without researching these technologies).

• Added the Refactored Restrictions to the Ethical Guideline Refactoring GalCom resolution, which increases the draw chance for dangerous and rare technologies.

• Added demands to the Technologist faction pertaining to Research Restriction policies.

Balance​​

• The Charismatic and Repugnant traits (and their robotic, cybernetic and overtuned equivalents) now additionally provide job efficiency modifiers for elite strata and bio-trophy jobs. Go forth and pamper the galaxy's most adorable creatures! (Edit: Bio Trophies are missing "_bonus_" from the static modifier so it's not applying correctly. This will be fixed in the next update.)

• Decreased amenities granted by housing buildings.

• Reactor Boosters now give a percentage boost to reactor output.

• Later growth stages of biological ships now have an inherent reactor output percentage boost.

• Rebalanced trade policies for regular empires.

  • Wealth Creation: 50% Trade, 50% Energy.

  • Consumer Benefits: 50% Trade, 25% Consumer Goods, 25% Conversion Tax.

  • Marketplace of Ideas: 50% Trade, 25% Unity, 25% Conversion Tax.

  • Trade League: 50% Trade, 15% Energy, 15% Consumer Goods, 15% Unity, 5% Conversion Tax.

  • Holy Covenant: 50% Trade, 37.5% Unity, 12% Conversion Tax.

  • Mutual Aid: 25% Trade, 20% Energy, 20% Minerals, 20% Food, 15% Unity.

• Strategic Resource and planetary special feature balancing:

  • Assorted planetary features that gave rare crystals or exotic gases from technicians now apply to miners or farmers respectively

  • Added new District Specializations for strategic resources and some special features:

    • Rare Crystal Extraction district specialization to Mining Districts

    • Volatile Motes Harvesting district specialization to Generator Districts

    • Exotic Gas Capture district specialization to Agricultural Districts

    • Central Spire district specialization for the Urban Districts of certain Relic Worlds

  • The industrial sector planetary feature on relic worlds now gives +6 farming district capacity

  • The Betharian Processing district specialization now gives additional miner jobs to the mining districts.

  • Reduced the strategic resources production of industrial jobs from refineries, chemical plants and crystal plants.

  • Reduced the strategic resources production of industrial jobs from ancient refineries.

  • Increased the minor artifact cost of the ancient refinery.

  • Increased strategic resource cost and upkeep for several research buildings.

Bugfix​​

• The Spare Organs species trait will no longer interfere with Envoy assignment. Death now relieves them from their duties.

• Purging now properly disables regular pop upkeep because we really don't budget for the dead

• Fleet that are fighting are no longer eligible for special project requirements

• Civilians will now be properly used in the Lathe

• Updated Synaptic Reinforcement and Industrial Maintenance edicts to account for 4.0 changes.

• Robots no longer benefit from Cloning Vats

• Fixed the Housing tooltip not correctly showing district modifiers

• Fixed Buildings modifiers not being calculated at game start

• Fixed some duplicated entries of haruspex occurring from spiritualist federations

• Wilderness empires now have a fallback if their capital buildings are deleted during the monthly tick.

• Updated the Chronicle Drones production tooltip to reflect that they no longer produce amenities.

• The Lethal Ecosphere blocker will no longer require a technology to clear, cleaning up the technology view.

• Leviathan Parades should now have the name of the beastie you killed in the title again.

• Fixed a few more cases in which pops that should be bio-trophies weren't be pampered correctly (for example refugees that were insisting that they were being purged)

• Pops resettled to the Synaptic Lathe should no longer retain any belief that they still belong to any social stratum that isn't being part of a computer

• Stasis Wardens no longer scale their own or Civilian workforce into infinity and beyond

• Dramatically increased the weight for Offspring Drones, meaning that your planets are more likely to employ them and avoid the negative modifier.

• Fixed Pirate Events not spawning pirates

• Artisan Drones now have a food upkeep instead of a mineral one if you have a Catalytic Processing Civic.

• Fixed the space time anomaly saying it converted physicists into dimensional researchers.

• Added volatile mote cost and upkeep for alloy reclamation plant.

Stability/Performance​​

• Fixed undefined behavior in planetary construction (potentially leading to CTDS:s and OOS:s) of Districts and District Specializations as well as replacing/upgrading/repairing Buildings, Districts and District Specializations.

• Fixed crash when using the "Alerts.ShowAll" console command.

• Fixes OOS due to ship construction time is calculated to 0 on client but correct on server

• Improved the logic that checks for hidden Cutholoids

• Fixed OOS with ship positions due to combat.

AI​

• Continued improvements to AI economic plans.

UI​

• Added alert settings to the settings menu.

• Removed "Filter by Type" from message settings.

• Fixed situation alerts showing the wrong severity based on current stage.

For next week, one of our big focuses is looking at Slavery in general. While unemployed slaves intentionally do not demote into Civilians, they should not simply disappear from the economic tab. We're also strongly leaning towards relaxing the current rules on automatic migration and slaves and letting unemployed slaves migrate without the need of special buildings.

We'll also be continuing economic balancing and bugfixing.

Please let us know if this update resolves most multiplayer desyncs, and provide bug reports with saves if you run into any. We're also interested in any other feedback you have, especially around how the AI is doing with this round of changes and what combinations of civics or origins you consider "broken" (either in a good or bad way). We'll try to prioritize some of those for next week's update (especially if you can provide saves).

For the complete list of previous changes in this branch (excluding the new ones), please visit the Paradox Forums[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

As mentioned before, these changes are expected to be release into the live branch later on this month. Currently we're strongly leaning towards including the Wilderness changes contained within this branch, as they fix several key issues with the gameplay experience.

To opt into the Wilderness Open Beta, go to your Steam library, right click on Stellaris -> Properties -> Betas -> select "wilderness- Wilderness Open Beta" branch in the Beta Participation dropdown. You may need to restart Steam to get it to appear.

Thank you for playing Stellaris!