This morning we released the Stellaris 4.2.3 ‘Corvus’ update, with the following changes - updates from last Friday’s Open Beta are bold:
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4.2.3 ‘Corvus’ Release Notes
[p]Improvement[/p]- [p]Thermophiles can pick the Ocean Paradise Origin[/p][/*]
- [p]Thermophiles can pick the Aquatic Trait[/p][/*]
- [p]Thermophiles can pick the Agrarian Trait[/p][/*]
- [p]Thermophiles can pick the Agrarian Idyll Civic[/p][/*]
- [p]Thermophiles can pick the Anglers Civic[/p][/*]
- [p]Adds conditions to get alloys when you extort a Spiritualist Thermophile faction.[/p][/*]
- [p]Pyromanic Instinct blocks "friendly" Civics and Origins[/p][/*]
- [p]Rogue Servitor empires now receive an additional Alloys income when having an Infernal subspecies (instead of food)[/p][/*]
- [p]Reduced Infernal Livestock output from base 1.5 down to 1 Alloy[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted cost of the "Distribute Living Metal" decision from 500LM to 700LM[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted "Thermal Engineer" councilor (replaced "Research Cost (Engineering) -1%" with "Research Station Output +4%")[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted "Pyromanic Priest" councilor (Job Consumer Goods upkeep from -3% to -2%)[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted "Galvanic Symbiosis" planetary refund modifier from 1 to 0.75[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Adjusted Entropy Conduit ship stats (+2000 Hull +1000 Armor +2000 Shield)[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Adjusted "Entropy Harnessing" edict (Energy Credits from Technicians from -1 to -2.5, Entropy from Technicians from 0.5 to 0.4)[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Colonies buffed by Entropy Conduits now produce more unity[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Stars stellarformed by Entropy Conduits now gain additional deposits[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Machine Intelligence can now pick the ascension perk[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Cost of the "Life Seeding" decision changed from 1000 Energy to 2500 Entropy Crystals[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted alloy upkeep of Spawning Drones from 2.5 to 2[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted Infernal Livestock output from 1 to 0.75 alloys[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed a typo in mercenary dividends relating to Galactic Risk Management[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Regenerative Armor from Galvanic Synthesis civic not auto-upgrading in ship designer when better armor technologies are researched[/p][/*]
- [p]Stop Quantum Catapult targeting graphics being shown in System view[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Infernal upkeep not being affected by Clone Soldier and Necrophage origin species traits.[/p][/*]
- [p]Subterranean Empires now have uncapped Mining Districts on Volcanic Worlds.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed issues with psionic assimilation for gestalt empires and individualist machines.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Ruler clothing for Infernal portrait 5 (shoulder plate for the hedgehog)[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the issue with Black Needle Base no longer being colonizable after assaulting it.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Augmentation Bazaars not having access to Loyalty Circuits in empire creation.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Broken Shackles starting with 2k more pops than they should[/p][/*]
- [p]Migrating Forests modifiers and Special Projects are removed when the planet is terraformed to a Volcanic World.[/p][/*]
- [p]Eager Explorers now require Scientific Method to unlock Thermotechnic Forums.[/p][/*]
- [p]Stability from the Unbreakable Resolve trait gets properly applied even if the pop groups with Unbreakable Resolve were later additions to the planet in question[/p][/*]
- [p]Pops under assimilation no longer have extra upkeep.[/p][/*]
- [p]Planets with event purges should no longer continue purging after having been recolonized.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the tooltip for Syncretic Evolution mentioning the wrong number of pops.[/p][/*]
- [p]Subterraneans can no longer build Industrial Mining Sites without any gameplay effect.[/p][/*]
- [p]Volcanic World mineral extraction zones can now build Industrial Mining Sites for +2/+4/+6/+8 mineral districts unless they are already uncapped.[/p][/*]
- [p]Added flag infernal_subspecies for Infernal subspecies (used for some civics/mods)[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed event "Star-Crossed Lovers" appearing for Scorched World Heralds[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the "Arcology Project" decision not counting Volcanic World districts[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Volcanic Worlds not having a click sound[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed "Spawning Pools" from "Permutation Pools" civic for Hive Mind using food as Infernals[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed "Seismic Carpetbombing" creating Volcanic craters on artificial planets[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed "Bombardment Stances" not killing the last pops of a planet[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Infernal Livestock not counting for a Evolutionary Predator purge[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Infernal Livestock counting as Specialists[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the starbase building "Gravitational Centrifuge" (crisis path) not being buildable in crisis systems[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Pre-FTL civilizations spawned by the Hyperthermia crisis not ascending into the space age[/p][/*]
- [p]Pyromanic Instinct blocks other genocidal Civics[/p][/*]
- [p]Tankbound now gains Overseers from rural districts (Geothermal, Melting) on Volcanic Worlds[/p][/*]
- [p]AI Empires now build Thermotechnic Districts on Volcanic planets[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the Military Academy adding research output and consumer goods upkeep to soldier and warrior drone jobs.[/p][/*]
- [p]Military Academy bonus workforce is now empire-wide[/p][/*]
- [p]Hard Reset is no longer a valid origin for AI empires (that's like the entire narrative!)[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed some edgecases when playing Hard Reset where you could end up with pops who had the old negative traits and never lost them.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the number of pops affected by the Zoonotic Plague, Enigmatic Fortress, and Numistic Order deals[/p][/*]
- [p]Terraforming your Homeworld will no longer cause the Terraforming event talking about making a second homeworld to fire.[/p][/*]
- [p]Re-enabled Devastation from Cosmic Storms at 0.01 per month.[/p][/*]
- [p]Infernal AI empires colonize properly (even if they don't have any food)[/p][/*]
- [p]Overclocking setting of the galactic crucible now also persists after loading a save game[/p][/*]
- [p]You can no longer queue construction of districts while the Arcology Project is underway.[/p][/*]
- [p]Cybernetic Imperial authorities now give additional noble jobs.[/p][/*]
- [p]Purging infernal pops gives alloys[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Fallen Empires being able to build "Starfire Cannons"[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Volcanic Forges not being destroyed after terraforming a planet into a Hive/Machine World or Ecumenopolis[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Fixed Conduits damaging own colonies when playing as non-Infernal empire[/p][/*]
- [p]Crisis Path: Fixed mining & research stations not working correctly when Conduits stellarform a star[/p][/*]
- [p]FE outposts now rebuild in systems where they have unconquered planets.[/p][/*]
- [p]Artillery combat computers will now prefer median range instead of max range, allowing Titans to use most of their weapons instead of only their Titan Weapon[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed erroneous tooltip for the Cave Dweller concept[/p][/*]
- [p]Removed the surface quarry and the voltaic production yard from urban zones[/p][/*]
- [p]the Justicial Complex FE building can now be built on Penal Colonies[/p][/*]
- [p]Megastructures show correct value in upgrade tool tip for effects applied with the upgrade[/p][/*]
- [p]Stars stellarformed by an entropy conduit no longer reroll the deposits of the star[/p][/*]
- [p]Certain special deposits, such as those from the Life-Seeded origin, are now correctly kept upon terraforming into hive or machine worlds.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed being able to issue some fleet orders to unreachable systems if the fleet has a jump drive.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed missing newline for "not in range of Jump Drive" message in the tooltip for the build orbital station command.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed efficiency being able to go negative, causing jobs to run in reverse. As bad as those slave riots or fire cult ruined planets are, Metallurgists shouldn’t disassemble alloys back into their original components.[/p][/*]
- [p]Reduced memory allocations in topbar UI updates[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Mac CTD happening in late game when calculating fleet auras[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed object lifetime issue from scope used by on_resolution_failed leading to undefined behavior.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed crash in strike craft being damaged by non existing/dead fleet.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fix an OOS on reconnect where Starbases where blocking fleets path on the server but not on the client[/p][/*]
- [p]Removed dependency on SetThreadDescription to enable the game to run on ex Windows 10 LTSB 2016.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed CTD that could happen when a special project was completed while no longer valid[/p][/*]
- [p]Made Stellaris respond to OS events during loading gui types to avoid "freezing" the system at 5% loading for an unknown amount of time (only dx11 backend).[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed some more occurrences where file read/write is being blocked by system and stellaris handling it by crashing.[/p][/*]
- [p]Added a new flag to the Entropy Conduit target script to exclude special stars[/p][/*]
Post-release support continues with the 4.2.4 patch currently being worked on.
If you haven’t seen it yet, the team at Forgotten Empires created a music video for the Infernals Species Pack, titled From Ashes We Rise.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][previewyoutube="VL4t-vELfzM;full"][/previewyoutube][p]Stick it on loop in the background while I go over our next steps.
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Performance and Ongoing Goals
[p]As described in Dev Diary #399, the top priorities of the Custodian team are:[/p][olist][*][p]Get the overall MP Out of Sync rate back to 4.0.23 levels.[/p][/*][*][p]Focus on Performance improvements to get average overnight daily tick times for 300 year games under 375ms. (3.14 performance target.)[/p][/*][*][p]Reduce the MP Out of Sync rate for desyncs that recur after resyncing to 60% of the 4.0.23 rate.[/p][/*][*][p]Continue working on Performance improvements to get overnight average daily tick times for 300 year games under 350ms.[/p][/*][*][p]Rewrite how slavery is implemented.[/p][/*][/olist][p]The 4.2.0 Open Beta brought over some improvements to thread pooling and how modifiers are applied to our version of the Clausewitz Engine, and it had some hardware-dependent performance improvements. Following the successful Open Beta, we included these changes in the Infernals release, and our internal performance graphs (Huge galaxy, default settings otherwise) comparing 4.1.7 (blue) to 4.2 (red) were pretty nice, looking like this:[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/99223d33186bc1e51f499ee198173ddff198e73e.png"][/img][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/745d3e3d21aa4cccb6142b607e134a99bb03d671.png"][/img][/p][p]4.2 reached the average of 1 second per day (30 seconds per month) about 100 years later than 4.1.7 did.[/p][p](The steep drop at the end is due to tracking ending.)[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/e5c5a20b3a675b581a8be887431b389f16ccfa9d.png"][/img][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/f475da0054f5566e6eabfefaf5309cd97d149ff4.png"][/img][/p][p]In our averages, the internal overnight runs were about 17% faster on 4.2 than 4.1.7. We’re still not where we want to be yet though.
As to where to go from there - I expect that we’ll be able to put up an early version of the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta within the next couple of weeks.
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4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta
[p]Cetus is ‘the whale’ - specifically, the sea monster sent to ravage King Cepheus’ realm after Cassiopeia boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nereids. Like that monster, this patch is intended to bring things down a notch.We’ll be rolling changes into this Open Beta over time. In the initial drop, the only changes that aren’t already live in 4.2 will be the economic updates and ship design changes. These two alone have yielded about a 7% further improvement in overall performance, but as a warning, they’ve also made some aspects of the game much, much harder.
The economic level in the 4.3 Open Beta is much lower than from 4.0 to 4.2 - an economic “stat squish” has been done to compress numbers a fair bit across the board. We made changes to control most instances of non-linear growth, but we intentionally did not affect some threats like aggressive Space Amoebas or most Leviathans that haven’t kept up over the years. They haven’t been a challenge for quite some time, so it may come as a bit of a shock. Your fleets and economy will be weaker, as will that of other standard empires, but some challenges out there have intentionally not been weakened.
This rebalancing recenters what is “normal”, so old fleet or production values should not be used as a guideline for what’s “good” in this new world.
Our list of targets for 4.3, with their current status (????: Complete ????: Partial ????: Pending) are:
[/p][p]???? Economic Updates:[/p][p]Updates have been made to Empire Size Modifiers, Unemployment, Base Tech Costs, Ethics modifiers, Upkeep Modifiers, produces_add Modifiers, Job-Based Research, Unity Production, Ascension Time, Living Standards, Happiness, Stability, Jobs per Pop, Housing Reductions, Colony Designations, Planetary Ascension, Special Planetary Deposits, Strategic Resource Production, Automation Buildings, and Fallen Empire Buildings.[/p][p]Still outstanding are passes on Megacorp Branch Offices, most Ascensions, most Traditions, some Civics, some Councilor Effects, Automation Costs, and more.[/p][p]???? Naval Changes:[/p][p]Bordering on green - the branch includes Naval Capacity changes (both amount used and ease of generation), inherent Armor and Shield hardening, Damage Reduction effects, Frigate buffs, Titan buffs, general ship stats, Cost and Upkeep.[/p][p]Still outstanding include changes to Nanite Swarmers and Teeth of the Eater, as well as some balance issues.[/p][p]???? Integrate Modifier System from Newer Clausewitz[/p][p]Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.[/p][p]???? Integrate Thread Pool System from Newer Clausewitz[/p][p]Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.[/p][p]???? Improved Crash Reporter[/p][p]Improved reporting on crashes to help us be able to fix them. Complete, and due to the successful Open Beta, merged into 4.2.[/p][p]???? Improved Performance Tracking[/p][p]Improved reporting on general game performance to help find issues[/p][p]???? Improved Out-of-Sync Tracking and Reporting[/p][p]Improved reporting and tracking of OOSes to make them easier to track down and fix[/p][p]???? “Dangerous” Modifier Optimizations[/p][p]Optimize Pop Groups, Ships, Fleets, Planets, Armies, Espionage, and Scripted Triggers to take advantage of the new systems.[/p][p]Note that we do expect that as this is implemented, multiplayer stability will temporarily get worse on the beta branch until we can find and fix the new issues.[/p][p]???? Ethics and Factions Optimizations[/p][p]Fixes to a long list of issues surrounding Ethics Shift and Factions.[/p][p]???? Memory Allocation Optimizations[/p][p]Improved memory use and allocation.[/p][p]???? Improved Job Swapping[/p][p]New job swap options can let us further merge jobs, making gestalt jobs swaps of their regular counterparts.[/p][p]???? Slavery Reimplementation[/p][p]Reimplement Slavery using a simpler system that will work better with 4.x systems.[/p][p]???? Multiplayer Stability[/p][p]Reach a more acceptable level of Multiplayer Out-of-Syncs.[/p][p]
You’ll see this list repeated a few times in diaries over the next few months.
Each of these items are able to be added or removed from the Open Beta branch individually - for example, if we decide that we do not want to release the Naval Changes, they are not part of the base 4.3 branch at this time and can remain in a parallel branch for as long as needed for further polish.
As I mentioned earlier, this will be a rolling Open Beta, and we expect to update it roughly once every two weeks (skipping the second half of December - though I would like to update it once before the end of the year). It’s possible that it will be updated more often than that when features come online. Currently 4.3 ‘Cetus’ is expected to go live sometime during the first quarter of 2026, but what is actually in it and whether or not it shifts to later on will depend on how the Open Beta progresses.
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Primal Plushie: The Babyhemoth
[p]So when I had the chance to influence the next Makeship Stellaris product, I immediately thought of this event:[img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/4e6353749b0ab9ada240a630ca45f11008e910f7.png"][/img][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/bc601030b0ec01be4e9cf74b89f025e8c0ac621a.png"][/img][/p]
The Babyhemoth has arrived.
[p][/p]Next Week
[p]Next week we’ll go into more detail on the exact changes that the economic and naval changes entail. It’s gonna be a long one.[/p][p]See you then![/p][p]
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