by Eladrin

Happy Thursday!

Thanks for all of the feedback you’ve provided in the 3.9 Open Beta, and the surveys that you’ve filled out. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to get your eyes on things early, and it gives us a chance to see how you’re using certain things and tweak them before the actual release. As always, things in the beta are subject to change before release, and some things in there are still placeholders.

We’ve been polishing it and chiseling away at the various issues you’ve found, and are updating it today with some additional changes, and have opened up a new survey for additional feedback. (So any of you that filled out the first one will be able to respond to the changes.)

Here’s the full list of today’s changes:

3.9 ‘CAELUM’ OPEN BETA PATCH 1

Balance

• Clerks now also provide +1% trade value
• Reduced Trader upkeep to 1 CG
• Habitat Industrial Districts give +0.25 Building Slots
• Hydroponics Habitat Designation now increases food production from farmers
• Increased Alloy and Influence cost of Habitat Central Complexes
• Removed the Influence cost of Orbitals
• The modifiers on the unique Habitats in the Ithome’s Gate now provide additional building slots.
• Upgrading Habitats with planetary decisions now gives +1 Branch Office Building for each upgrade.
• Void Dweller Hive-Minds no longer start with unemployment.
• Void Dwellers and Voidborne now gives +2 Max Districts on Habitats
• You can now build Habitat Central Complex and Major Orbitals around stars.
• Fruitful Partnership: lowered the cost of the “Open Seed Pods” special project from 5000 energy to 3000
• Machine Intelligences now have access to the Harvesters trait

Bugfix

• Fixed the end-game crisis not being able to destroy orbitals
• Fixed “In Breach Of The Galactic Law” not working properly
• Fixed an issue where Fruitful Partnership empires where unable to establish first contact with Amoebas
• Fixed issue with tooltips flickering when ending up under mouse when having concepts
• Fixed Mechromancers purging their cyber-zombies.
• Gestalt empires spawned via the Common Ground and Hegemony origins no longer have their Growth Node acting as the governor of their homeworld.
• Gestalt empires spawned via the Common Ground and Hegemony origins now have the correct traits.
• Orbitals are now graphically smaller
• Orbitals constructed in orbit of bodies that have both energy and mining deposits now provide both types of district. This include the Ether Drake’s Hoard
• Removed the “Seed Pod” placeholder sensor component
• Restoring the Payback habitat correctly spawns a major orbital
• Seeded planet modifier now show their modifiers in addition to custom tooltips.
• The From Beyond science ship will no longer crash the game if you don’t own First Contact.
• The Star Mall and Federation’s End habitats are now correctly size 6 and level 3 or 1 respectively.
• Upgrading the seeded planet modifier now removes the previous modifier.
• You can no longer construct an Orbital Assembly Complex on a Ringworld or Habitat
• You can no longer have two habitats in the Payback starting system

Improvement

• Added effects to Infected planets stage 1-3, infested planets by the scourge crisis and added entity with effect for hive worlds.
• Small visual update on shroud entity

Modding

• Swapped is_orbital_ring = no for is_normal_starbase = yes
• Trigger graphical_culture now supports the megastructure scope.

Don’t forget to turn off your mods, they will break.

This is a reminder that Stellaris is taking part in the Steam Strategy Fest.

This is an opportunity for you to pick up the Plantoids, Humanoids, Lithoids, and Necroids Species Packs at a discounted price before their base prices increase to $9.99 alongside the release of 3.9 ‘Caelum’.

We’ve also bundled all of the Species Packs together for you while the Strategy Fest is ongoing.

Next week the dev diary will be a day early, since the team will be holding a Reddit AMA on /r/stellaris on Wednesday Sept 6th, from 15:00-17:00. Bring us your questions!

The dev diary will be the 3.9 ‘Caelum’ Release Notes.

The Sculptor’s Chisel produces only perfection.

Visit the Paradox forums for an .stl for the Jeff bust, if you have access to a 3d printer.