Dev Diary #433 - 4.5 'Cygnus' Preliminary Release Notes

by Eladrin

The Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta is drawing to a close, and we’re currently building a release candidate.

We’ve temporarily pulled Exclusive Harvesting Rights from 4.5 - your feedback from the Open Beta made it clear that it needed more balancing time, but expect it to return in a future release.

4.5.0 ‘Cygnus’ has the most bugfix entries of any Stellaris patch, with more bugfixes than our two previous bugfix record holders - 2.0.2 and 3.0.1 - combined. Keep reporting them and the Custodians will keep fixing them.

Here are the complete preliminary release notes for the patch:

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian Update Preliminary 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.

Flag emblems are now correctly centered within the Empire's Flag hexagon frame

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.
• Starbase, Orbital Ring, and Waystation weapon modules are now weapon-type-specific (lasers, mass drivers, swarmer missiles, particle launchers, psionic torpedoes, scourge missiles, and several strike-craft hangars), each gated by the matching weapon technology and automatically upgrading to your latest tier.
• The Starbase Weapon Preference policy now includes Explosive and Strike Craft options, and automated station designs build the weapon modules matching the chosen preference.
• Nomad empires can now benefit from the Composer of Strands, Whisperers in the Void, and End of the Cycle Greatest Patron accords, with Arkship-appropriate rewards.
• Adaptive Evolution approach effect will be displayed as an active situation effect instead of just in the tooltip over the approach selection button.
• Overall pass to faction and ethic attractions, improving behaviors for small pop groups and concurrent factions
• Promoting or suppressing a faction has an impact on its attraction
• Factions with the same ethics can be promoted and suppressed separately
• When the Shroud consumes a world, the Zro deposit left behind scales with the population lost.

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.

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

The Cradle of Souls maximum-intensity aura surge has been reworked. It no longer builds defence platforms; instead every empire with systems in the aura gains Trust and a chance at a Favor, subjects gain Loyalty, Federation members gain Cohesion, and the patron's own colonies gain a crime or deviancy reducing "Cradle's Serenity". The passive starbase fire-rate bonus is removed.

The Instrument and Cradle Chosen psionic leader traits now grant applicable bonuses to Gestalt and Nomad empires instead of slave-workforce, faction, and friendly-territory bonuses they could not use.

All ships and cloned space fauna that have a mineral cost can no longer be built if your Operational Reserves are critical

The Synthetic Awareness luminary trait now grants +15% Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops instead of +25% Resources from Jobs.

Each faction now gains attraction in empires holding the secondary ethic it is associated with

Pops no longer favor their current faction when evaluating which faction to join

Pops of another species can now join the Supremacists, at a reduced attraction

A faction losing its potential members is now destroyed after a delay instead of immediately

Progressive, Prosperity and Totalitarian attraction now depends on citizenship rights instead of the Pop's species

The Dimensional Manipulator now grants a fixed number of 5 districts instead of a 33%

Pop Growth from Hedonists now requires the Colony to have free Housing and Amenities, and is lost entirely while the empire has a Consumer Goods deficit.

Hedonists now produce Unity and consume a small amount of Consumer Goods regardless of their Living Standard, where previously the Unity came only from Decadent Lifestyle.

Pleasure Seekers empires now begin with a Civilian Industries building instead of Holo-Theatres.

Offspring bio-ships now use the same Naval Capacity as the bio-ships they are grown from.

The Calling of Arms now asks for a total Naval Capacity in line with current ship sizes, rather than a target reachable with a handful of Corvettes.

Autocannons, Disruptors and other short-ranged weapons are no longer equippable on Starbases, Orbital Rings or Deep Space Citadels.

Trade deposits now increase the resources gained from harvesting a planet.

Deep Scanning is less likely to uncover Minor Artifacts if Minor Artifacts have already been found in the system. Shoutout to Composer of Strands for abusing this.

Reduced the arkship harvesting and action modifiers provided by harvester jobs.

Reduced the weapon damage each Ordnance Engineering weapon zone grants per soldier job from 5% to 1%.

Cybernetic pops now gain 10% Job Efficiency, up from 5%. The Limited Cyberization penalty for hive drones doubles to match.

The Cybernetic Luminary leader experience penalty is reduced from 25% to 10%.

Pops ethics change is accelerated, by increasing a lot the frequency of change and marginally diminishing the size of the changes.

Pops faction fill is much slower by default, the ethic attraction factor increased to give agency over that and allow for faster change

Pops now leave a faction as soon as it becomes invalid or exceeds its eligible Pops, instead of waiting for the monthly update

Biomorphosis now takes about half as long to complete, bringing it in line with the other ascension paths.

Champions Forge Live will now spawn after the Galactic Community has been formed to ensure communications do not spread too quickly

Biological ships are no longer affected by energy deficits.

Biological ships are now affected by food deficits.

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

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

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 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 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.