Stellaris Dev Diary #403 - Cosmic Dawn, Civics, Infernal Shipset

by Eladrin

Hello again!

4.1.7 released earlier this week with the following changes:

4.1.7 ‘Lyra’ Open Beta Patch Notes

Improvement​

• AI exterminator empires with the chosen civic will not pick the Cradle of Souls as their patron.
• Updated the Broken Shackles Origin Tooltip to mention that you need to explore the Crashed Slaver Ship dig site before unlocking City District Specializations.
• Added the Visionary job swap for politicians, which combines Science Directors and Merchants

Balance​

• Changed the Cradle of Souls chosen trait to give +30%/+15% Political Power as Planet / Sector governor instead of +750%/+500%.
• The Cybernetic and Cyber Commando traits now allow species to live on machine worlds, even outside of a driven assimilator.
• The Opus core world for the Hard Reset origin is now size 25.
• The Extradimensional Experimentation planetary decision now has the Data-Driven Theorem Facility increase physicist output and give them zro upkeep.
• Cybernetic Creed empires with Civil Education no longer start with a massive consumer goods deficit.

Bugfix​

• Many fixes related to Cybernetic Ascension (with a special thanks to modder FirePrince for providing a number of these)[list]
• Fixed handling of leader species when converting between limited and not limited cyberization policies.
• Improved Neural Chip conversion
• Updated leader trait handling after species modification.
• Fixed checks regarding subject-overlord relations on if you are a legal criminal or not.
• Fixed scope errors in species assimilation.
• Fixed species assimilation not handling robots for synthetically ascended organics.
• Improved handling of mechromancy
• Fixed the cyberization situation claiming you needed to build an augmentation center even if you had built one
• Fixed issues with converting between the Cyberization Standards policies.
• Cyberization pop conversion the situation now takes into account your Cyberization Standards policy.

Fixed an issue where your authority wouldn't change to Imperial after appointing your ruler as Divine Sovereign

The Divine Sovereign civic is now properly removed, should the chosen leader of an empire die.

Added missing Production Overseers jobs to multiple rural districts for Tankbound empires.

The Prethoryn should once again turn worlds into Infested worlds once they have finished purging the pops on it.

The Contingency should be able to purge pops again and should also properly gain control of them when they finish the purging.

Corrected missing full stops at the end of the Great Awakening tooltip.

Restored the ending of the Fleet Maneuver event chain.

Added missing upkeep modifier from Tankbound to habitat rural districts.

Updated ringworld colony designations to follow the new standards

The relic world specialization being blocked by the collapsed spire will no longer have repeat lines in it

The Retirement Home achievement is once again achievable

Fixed a wide range of the galaxy's species going on a hunger strike (including MSI for some reason!)

Fixed the Nivlac trait not displaying an icon, it now shares its icon with the Extremely Adaptive trait.

Alloy megaforges now correctly have a volatile motes cost and upkeep.

Fixed missing species name in event title and descript when awakening psionic abilities.

The Minor Artifact Decision "Initiate Performance Competition" will once again be providing working modifiers

The Hard Reset species traits will once again be localized

Sabotaging Starbases should no longer generate ethics options that mention your target's ethic.

Fixed modifier removal being displayed twice in Order Restored event acceptance tooltip.

first_contact.15, the event that talks about the location of your contact's country's homeworld will no longer sometimes try to tell you about their star instead.

Fixed being able to take the Hegemon origin while being Egalitarian

Hard Reset origin and Tankbound civic are now incompatible due to mutually exclusive mechanics.

Empires are no longer required to feed any pre-sapients they find in the galaxy. (But your cat will still claim it has never been fed).

Indentured Servitude and Battle Thralls no longer make any mention of soldier jobs as they are worker jobs.

Players now take ownership of claimed DSCs after war finishes

The Olonnais planet now properly becomes colonizable after completing the related special project

Fixed a localization issue in the Rogue Agent event chain

Fixed a duplicated cost issue in the Behemoth action tooltips

Blind trait now properly displays its workforce efficiency modifier in the trait tooltip.

Fixed Psionic Avatars sometimes spawning multiple times.

Updated the outcomes of the Blue Lotus event chain.

set_hostile effect should now properly set relation both ways

Implemented some slavery, presapient, and robot category fixes discovered by fs_nanamedou. These were causing unemployed slaves to get caught in job loops and failing to process correctly, and correct the processing and unprocessing of presapients and robot servants. This also appears to fix some of the issues with Necrophages.

AI​

• The AI will now correctly build and upgrade Orbital Rings instead of usually leaving them empty. They will also no longer be absolutely obsessed with creating Hatcheries or Beastports out of them, even if they're literally unable to build those.

Modding​

• Added the soft_traits parameter to origins for traits the player should start with but can remove without making their government invalid

Stability​

• Fixed OOS in pop growth system

Today we’re going to go over the Cosmic Dawn origin, then take a look at the Civics of the Infernals Species Pack, and end with the ships. If you attended our livestream last week you’ve seen a lot of this. (Speaking of which, we’ll have another Infernal livestream today at 16 CET.)

On the Custodian team, we’ve made some more progress on improving the underlying architecture of modifier application and porting a more modern solution for threading from newer versions of the Clausewitz engine into Stellaris. These by themselves will not provide significant changes yet, but are part of the necessary work to create a better foundation to build upon during the rest of the year’s Open Betas.

Since this has been going fairly well, currently we’re expecting to put a 4.2.0 Open Beta up sometime early next week.

On the design side, the advanced hulls experiment has run into some snags with UX and, to be perfectly honest, fun. I’m not thrilled with how some of the gameplay is working and the impact it has on pacing, so I’ve shelved that variant for now and am experimenting with a different trial that also reduces ship counts that so far feels like it works better within existing systems. Some things, like Titan weapons having collateral damage, will likely make it into this experiment as well. More info on this as I get a better feel for it and as we get closer to the 4.3.0 Open Beta.

Cosmic Dawn​

Like a warmer Remnants, in the Cosmic Dawn origin, your empire once thrived long ago. Your people awaken to a cold and hostile galaxy, and you have the opportunity to find and release your brethren and rediscover the past.

This origin may appeal greatly to anyone who enjoys digging holes, and meshes thematically quite nicely with the Galactic Hyperthermia Crisis Path.

I am a slug and I’m digging a hole.​

I don’t want to spoil too much of what happens, though if you attend the livestream this afternoon I’m planning on playing Cosmic Dawn there.

Infernal Civics​

Four new civics are coming in the Infernal Species pack for regular empires - Fire Cult, Galvanic Synthesis, Planet Forgers, and Scorched World Heralds.

The Gestalt versions of these civics are extremely similar. There are some thematic differences between the Megacorp and regular empire versions and the Hive and Machine Intelligence version of Galvanic Symbiosis, but mechanically they match.

Planet Forgers are one way to gain Volcanic World habitability with non-Infernal portraits. You’re not required to have a Volcanic homeworld, but the civic does remove Arctic, Alpine, and Tundra Worlds.

Infernal Ships​

For the Infernal shipset, we wanted to go with sweeping obsidian teeming with energy. I’ll go through a few of the ships from concept art to what they look like in game.

The purple sections reflect your primary flag color.

Cool volcano inside the dome.

Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Titan, and Juggernaut

Science, Construction, and Colony Ships

Colossus, caught in the act.​

Anything Else?​

We’re neck and neck with EU5 on the comfy sweater front.

Get them here!​

And as mentioned before, we’ll have another livestream today, showing off Cosmic Dawn.

Next week’s livestream featuring the Red Giant Origin will be on Tuesday November 11th instead of Thursday - on Thursday we’re having a community mixer here in Stockholm from 16 - 18. If you’re in the area you can sign up here!

And Tuesday the 11th too!​

Next Week​

Next week, we’ll be focusing on the Red Giant origin and the Galactic Hyperthermia crisis.

See you then!