[/p][p]The plagues of last week have passed, so today we’ll be looking at the next “risky” change that we’d like to bring to the 4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta, relating to Pop Ethics and Ethics Drift.[/p]
Mixed Ethics within a Pop Group
[p]Instead of splitting Pop Groups up based on Ethics, we’re changing them so a Pop Group can have multiple ethics and factions simultaneously, with [c]pop_ethic_percentage[/c] values to describe how they’re split up. This simplifies ethic randomization logic, allows pop group ethic conversion to happen more reliably and more frequently, and dramatically reduces the number of pop groups in the late game.[/p][p]The Management tab of our planet shows which factions each pop group have joined, and which ethics and factions are represented within them.[/p][p][/p][p][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/4270bb7a6d41cb2d5b4bef5a39111d69eca6cc39.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p align="center"][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/bab9708bb04042d94d217a47912f94212cc69f91.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]Holding the Alt key will show a more detailed breakdown of how these attractions are derived:[/p][p align="center"][img src="https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/9703436/77400abda0b23b051703d8a8bebd52edc1097d75.png"][/img][/p][p][/p][p]In addition to reducing the number of Pop Groups overall, pops should drift between ethics and factions better than before. As it touches a wide number of systems, we consider it a risky change and would love to see the Open Beta find any issues with it.
[/p][p]This will unfortunately be a save-breaking change. We expect to push it to the Open Beta next week - currently targeting Tuesday. As a reminder, we have a Cetus Open Beta rollback branch available with the previous version, so you’ll have a little bit more time available to finish any games made on the current pre-ethics change builds.[/p][p][/p][p]I’m a modder, what do I need to know?[/p][p]Scopes, triggers, and effects have been adapted to match pop groups with multiple ethics, and we’ve added a couple of new triggers for you to use.[/p][p][/p][p][c]pop_has_ethic[/c] and [c]pop_group_has_ethic[/c] have been removed.[/p][p][c]has_ethic[/c] will continue to work with pop groups, but will return true if even a single pop within the pop group is of that ethic.
[/p][p][c]has_ethos =
What’s Next For 4.3?
[p]This week’s Open Beta update includes the following changes[/p][p][/p]4.3 ‘Cetus’ Open Beta Patch Notes 2026-02-26
[p][/p][p]Improvement [/p]- [p]Renamed Mercantile and Unyielding traditions to Commerce and Fortification to match the naming structure of all other traditions.[/p][/*]
- [p]More Mutagenic Spa balance:[/p][list]
- [p]Mutagenic Spas now only grant Substance Abuser to the governor of a planet with the baths on.[/p][/*]
- [p]Spa Attendants for Worker Coop buff the Union Stewards.[/p][/*]
- [p]Non-corporate Spa Attendants now produce 500 Amenities (was 100). Corporate Spa Attendants now provide 2 trade.[/p][/*]
- [p]Mutagenic Spa Councilors now increase the number of spa attendant jobs, this effect is amplified if they are a substance abuser.[/p][/*]
- [p]Mutagenic Spas can now be placed in research or unity district specializations[/p][/*]
- [p]Increased the bonuses from Food Processing, Mineral Purification, and Energy Grid buildings.[/p][/*]
- [p]Experimentation Chambers now provide a static number of experiment engineer jobs, and a scaling number of test subject jobs (depending on building tier). The number of test subject jobs is increased by 50% on Penal Colonies.[/p][/*]
- [p]Rebalanced the amount of research experiment engineers produce per crime on the planet. The bug in which the modifiers considered the uncapped crime on the colony has also been fixed.[/p][/*]
- [p]Consumer goods upkeep of experiment engineers now also increases with crime.[/p][/*]
- [p]Orderlies no longer reduce housing requirements on the planet.[/p][/*]
- [p]Orderlies now increase the job efficiency of experiment engineers and test subjects not their output.[/p][/*]
- [p]Switched Optimized Neurology (Purity flex 1) and Heightened Attributes (Purity flex 2).[/p][/*]
- [p]Switched Biochemical Composure/Regenerative Cloning (Cloning flex 2) and Artifical Population (Cloning flex 3).[/p][/*]
- [p]Removed Organic Job Efficiency bonuses from Somatic Subversiveness (Mutation flex 2) and Artificial Population.[/p][/*]
- [p]Optimized Neurology now gives -1 Leader Maximum Negative Traits instead of +1 Effective Leader Level[/p][/*]
- [p]Somatic Subversiveness now grants an additional +1 Effective Leader Level.[/p][/*]
- [p]Artificial Population now provides -10% Empire Size from Vat Grown pops[/p][/*]
- [p]-10% Empire Size from Pops from Heightened Attributes moved to Imperfection Remediation.[/p][/*]
- [p]Planet Automation should work again. A design pass is in progress to improve the scripts.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed founder species has happiness check being reversed applying wrong amenities buffs on planetary populations[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed the flavor text of a number of council position displaying the default name instead of the renamed title if the player had renamed them.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed Subterranean origin not giving extra housing on mining districts.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed nobles from cyber imperials not giving stability.[/p][/*]
- [p]Wenkwort planet modifiers are now correctly removed if the planet stops being a gaia world.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed a number of technologies having incorrect amounts for the housing modifiers they provide.[/p][/*]
- [p]Updated the Gestalt version of Chosen of the Eater to match the changes made to the non-gestalt version.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed mutation and cloning ascension not being able to remove advanced traits.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed modifiers from the Prospectorium Optimizer trait.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixes an issue with ship size map icons.[/p][/*]
- [p]Corrected erroneous tooltip for the Domination tradition finisher.[/p][/*]
- [p]Corporate Vampires and Entropy Drinkers can now be swapped seamlessly when transitioning between corporate and oligarchic .governments[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed several issues with secondary district names for Spiritualist empires and Ring World districts.[/p][/*]
- [p]Added abort triggers for the Prethoryn, Unbidden and Contingency event chain so they get properly cleaned up after their related crisis is defeated.[/p][/*]
- [p]Endbringers can no longer be declared a crisis if they are already the current crisis, which was restarting their war.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed incorrect founder species have happiness calculation resulting in inverted behavior that caused for example hive minds getting happiness bonuses.[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed sector governor missing propagation of non triggered trait modifiers to all planets in the sector and not only the capital.[/p][/*]
- [p]Adjusted various conditions in modifier tooltip generation to not show unintentional data, ex “planet:”[/p][/*]
- [p]Fixed ship/fleet special modifiers being applied properly to the simulation and not only show up in tooltip ex docked ship upkeep reduction.[/p][/*]
- [p]Reduced stack usage in combat targeting code that could cause a CTD/undefined behaviour when larger numbers of ships are involved in combat.[/p][/*]
- [p]Reduced number of memory allocations[/p][/*]
- [p]Optimized string allocations[/p][/*]
- [p]More string optimizations[/p][/*]
- [p]Reduced repeated localization lookups when calculating planet modifiers[/p][/*]
- [p]Moved modifier name calculations to tooltip generation where this was done in the game simulation.[/p][/*]
- [p]Micro optimized localization system even more, reducing amount of allocations, recursions and length calculations. [/p][/*]
[/p][p]I’m extremely pleased with the amount and the quality of feedback we’ve received from the Cetus Open Beta, but the Custodian Team’s jobs are nowhere near done yet. I’m currently thinking that I’d like to reopen the Beta branch later on in the spring for 4.4 with continued balancing work - and the Slavery changes we’ve been planning once they’re in a workable state.
[/p][p]The weekly Cetus streams start again today, where you can watch me get distracted by questions and utterly fail whatever objectives I’ve been trying to do with my empire.
[/p][p]See you there!
[/p][p align="center"]The next Stellaris Dev Diary will be on March 12th. Maybe it’ll be Preliminary Patch Notes![/p]
