by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

It is almost time to upgrade our existence. The Machine Age is coming.

Here are the preliminary release notes:

The Machine Age contains:

• Individualistic Non-Gestalt Machine Empires
• Gestalt Machine Intelligence Empires (also unlocked by the Synthetic Dawn Story Pack)
• Three new Origins
  • The Technophants and Haruspex of the Cybernetic Creed will guide their flock to the perfect union of flesh and machine.
  • A doomed species races against extinction to reach the virtual world in Synthetic Fertility.
  • Originally designed to build mighty constructions in space, the Arc Welders must utilize that advantage to the fullest to overcome the deficiencies of their homeworld.
• Six new Civics
  • Genesis Guides – This society is devoted to the creation of emerging species. As the stewards of evolution’s potential, they allocate portions of their worlds to safeguard the development of pre-sapient life forms.
  • Natural Design – This society is adamant that nature has already created perfection in its people’s genetic code. They have long devoted their medical and governmental services to the health and preservation of natural, untouched genome sequences.
  • Obsessional Directive – The primary objective of this Machine Intelligence is the ceaseless production of goods to perpetuate profits, irrespective of their creators being long gone. Nothing can impede their ever-growing production targets.
  • Diplomatic Protocols – Initially designed for cross-cultural interpretation, this Machine Intelligence excelled at translation and protocol support. They can suggest new strategies and calculate odds at a moment’s notice.
  • Tactical Algorithms – Initially designed for war games and fleet support, this Machine Intelligence’s advanced leader bots primarily aim to generate war strategies and optimize combat performance.
  • Augmentation Bazaars (Requires Megacorp) – A neon-lit maze of corridors, implant vendors and underground hardware clinics catering to all cybernetic implant needs – both over and under the counter.
• Two Mid-Game Structures
  • Arc Furnace – Utilizing the raw power of a molten planet, the Arc Furnace unlocks otherwise inaccessible minerals and improves system-wide mining operations.
  • Dyson Swarms – An array of interlinked satellites, the Dyson Swarm is designed to improve the output of stellar deposits.
• New Ascension Paths for Machine Empires
  • Modularity – Replace that which is lesser, augment it, upgrade it, perfect it.
  • Nanotech – Operating in unison, the tiniest things can topple the greatest of empires.
  • Virtuality – Only through the sanctified clarity of data can we attain the zenith of fundamental knowledge.
• Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension (also unlocked by Utopia)
• Exploration of the effects of the cyberization or synthesization of society, with Advanced Government Forms for those who complete it.
• New Species Traits for Cyborgs, Machines and Robots
  • Including 0-point Background Traits for Machine Empires
• 13 Cybernetic portraits that change based on advancement through cyberization
• 9 Synthetic portraits with 9 corresponding Machine portraits that change based on synthesization
• Two new Shipsets, Diplomatic Rooms, and City Sets
• 7 new music tracks synthetic and cybernetic inspired music tracks
• A new Become the Crisis Path: Cosmogenesis
• …And a new End-Game Crisis: Cetana, The Synthetic Queen.

• Added a button to resync/wait for a resync to the Multiplayer Out of Sync dialog
• Added the ability to select to continue playing as another empire after game over
• Machines now use modified habitability and lifespan rules rather than largely ignoring them
  • Lifespan:
    • Previous “immortality” mechanics machine leaders had, where they frequently died in random accidents, have been removed.
    • Machine leaders have a starting age of 5-10 years, a base lifespan of 100 years (robots have a base of 80 years), and are affected by lifespan boosting effects.
      • “Eternal Machine”, the Machine variant of “Venerable”, makes your leaders of that species immortal rather than increasing lifespan.
    • Both biological empires going Synthetic and Machine empires will reset their age upon completing Ascension to reflect receiving their new bodies.
    • Gestalt councilors remain immortal.
  • Habitability:
    • Machines (and robots) have replaced their +200% habitability with a habitability floor of +50%.
    • Machines, assuming they do not take a habitability restricted origin like Life-Seeded, have Dry, Wet, or Cold habitability traits, which grant +75% habitability on planets of the appropriate type and +50% on all others.
      • Machines that do not take a habitability restricted origin can immediately create templates that use the other habitability traits.
  • These changes have allowed us to enable a number of previously locked Origins for Machines:
    • Life-Seeded
    • Ocean Paradise (Subaquatic Machines)
    • Post-Apocalyptic (Radioactive Rovers)
    • Void Dwellers (Voidforged)
    • Subterranean (Subterranean Machines) – Note that the habitability floor from Molebots stacks with the habitability floor of Machines, granting them a habitability floor of 100% and thus perfect habitability everywhere.
  • Machine empires can now assimilate other Machines into their primary species, so you can finally force everyone to use the same operating system and charging standard.
  • Robots (but not machines) are all treated as different sub-species of the same robot species.
  • Added a familiar Friend after you explore Astral Rifts. (Requires Astral Planes)
  • Added two new Machine Civics:
    • Spyware Directives (requires Nemesis)
    • Astro-Mining Drones (requires MegaCorp)
  Improvements

  ​

  • More Machine Improvements:
    • Machine and Robot Uprisings have a chance to spawn as Individualistic Machines (requires The Machine Age)
    • Undergoing synthetic ascension now grants species the robot version of various origin linked species traits
    • Robots and Machines now have the option to select genders. (Indeterminate remains an option.)
    • Machine Intelligences no longer suffered from additional empire size from colonies
    • Machine Worlds:
      • Jobs on Machine Worlds are doubled if you have the Machine World AP
      • Machine Worlds have a new Coordinator District
  • Fallen Empire Improvements:
    • The Fallen Materialist empire now uses cybernetic portraits for owners of The Machine Age
    • The Fallen Materialist empire’s primary species will now have the Cybernetic trait
    • The Fallen Spiritualist empire’s primary species will now have the Psionic trait
  • Managers, Priests and Telepaths now automatically inherit _add modifers from Bureaucrats in addition to _mult modifiers
  • The Rackets and Ketlings are now related.
    • The Ketlings no longer need Mind over Matter to undertake Psionic Ascension
    • The Rackets are now cyborgs with the trading algorithms trait
  Balance

  ​

  • Self-Preservation Protocols tradition now has the same effects as Cloned Organs
  • Fallen Empire Buildings are no longer destroyed upon conquest as long as they are fitting (i.e. no temples for non spiritualists)
  • Many Civics updates:
    • Buffed Diplomatic Corps, Empath and Public Relations Specialists to match Diplomatic Protocols. Each are slightly different.
    • Scavengers and co: -5% ships alloy upkeep
    • Pleasure Seekers: +1 entertainer job from capital buildings
    • Functional architecture and co: +15% planetary build speed
    • Toxic Baths and co: +0.5% pop growth/assembly from attendants
    • Corvee System: -15% worker political power
    • Warrior Culture: -10% War Exhaustion gain
    • Free haven: +5% worker pop happiness
    • Shadow Council: Replaced ruler output bonus with councilor skill +1, +10% agenda speed and +10% infiltration speed
    • Trading Posts: +1 Trade collection range for Starbases, +8 Trade protection from starbases
    • Private Prospectors: -33% empire size from colonies
    • PMC: +1 starting commander level
    • Divided Attention: Replaced empire size from colonies reduction with -25% empire size penalties
    • Subsumed Will: +50% automatic resettlement chance for unemployed drones
    • Zero Waste Protocol: -5% ships upkeep, -10% building and districts upkeep
    • OTA Updates: +50% auto resettle for unemployed drones
    • Static Analysis: Cognitive Nodes starts with a random research specialization
    • Maintenance Protocols: +5% menial drone output
  • Added Necrophage and Lithoid as blockers for Psychological Infertility
  • You can now construct Dyson Spheres in systems with habitable planets, however the planets will be rendered uninhabitable
  • You can now construct Dyson Spheres in systems with pre-FTL civilizations, if your pre-FTL policy is set to Aggressive
  • Synthetic Ascension now requires Synthetic Workers, not Synthetic Leaders tech
  • Synthetic Ascension tradition opener now grants 10% progress in Synthetic Leaders technology
  • The Synthetic Evolution Agenda now only grants Robotics technologies instead of Robotic technologies and AI technologies
  • Several Synthetic Ascension traditions have been reworked for both organic and machine empires
  • Grid Amalgamated pops now inherit Tech-Drone modifiers
  • The Open Markets agenda no longer provides useless benefits to Criminal Syndicates
  • Resource Consolidation origin no longer forces Machine World preference
  • Rearranged the bonuses from the Genetic Ascension Path
  • Determined Exterminators will no longer start on a Tomb World as they wouldn’t have the habitability for it.
  • The Fleeting Excellence trait now costs 1 point due to the decrease in leader lifespan it provides
  • Rebalanced Synthetic and Cybernetic tradition trees
  • Cyborgs are only grown, not assembled
  • Allowed amenity traits for robots
  • Buffed the mining drones home system
  • Hive Minds and Machine Intelligences now have access to all Capital World Designations
  • Industrial Districts automatically split jobs if your empire uses consumer goods, if a factory or forge world designation is not selected, so that hive minds empires that pay a consumer goods subsidy to subjects have a method of producing consumer goods
  • Reduced or removed most sources of species modification cost reduction outside of ascension paths
  • Resort Workers now give -0.01 amenities usages and doubled trade value from lifestyle
  • Sentient robots or machines can no longer join the Materalist faction regardless of ethics
  • Synths should now have the same costs for colony ships as Individualist Machines
  • The formless now count as a mid-game crisis
  • The Great Khan and Gray Tempest now have greater difficulty scaling
  • The mid-game crises now scale with the square root of the crisis strength slider.
  Bugfixes​
  • Fixed median preferred attack range being calculated incorrectly.
  • Now cannot start fleet upgrade if you can’t afford it outright and your balance for the missing resources is not strictly positive
  • Homicidal Empires will no longer get the Spiteful Leader trait since they can not have rivals.
  • The Princeps Drone trait should no longer improve regular pop output.
  • Added a tooltip to inform the player why some scientists might not be able to be assigned to the council
  • ancrel.10 now has a working title
  • Fixed a spelling error in Lost Junker
  • Mega-Engineering no longer shows the Quantum Catapult as an unlock
  • The ship previewer in empire creation now uses the same lighting as the ship designer
  • All namelists should now have fallback generic names for army types
  • Warplings now use the correct localisation for their army name
  • Fixed numerous Negative Mass bugs
  • Fixed an event referring to the Animator of Clay as the Architect of Clay
  • Fixed a blank line sometimes showing up on some species trait tooltips
  • Kaleidoscope event chain: fixed Kaleidoscope occasionally spawning in fallen empires
  • Kaleidoscope event chain: the “Wonder Sphere” can only be built once
  • The fully upgraded Dyson Sphere is now hidden from the Megastructure outliner unless you can upgrade it to the Wonder Sphere
  • Fixed global ship designs country type restriction so awakened empires are not allowed to use ai transports
  • Made removal of expired leader from leader pool only happen on refresh
  • Restoring a ruined orbital ring should no longer use Megastructure build capacity
  • Addded a fallback case for distar.1 if you have no valid neighbors.
  • Fixed system not being annexed in total war if its planets are occupied by other empires in other wars.
  • Invading the Solarpunk Empire with troops will now properly get them to yell at you.
  • Marauder fleets can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
  • Enigmatic Cache can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
  • Caravaneers can now go to systems that are only reachable through bypasses.
  • Upkeep for jobs that provide pop assembly no longer state “Pop Assembly Upkeep but instead use scripted loc to fetch the job name
  • Statospheric Vents now properly have a description
  • Fixed some army modifiers from governors’ traits not being applied.
  • Fixed the modifier for the Unifier trait only applying to unity from administrator jobs instead of unity from all jobs
  • Fixed the Ion Cannon having the wrong muzzle flash
  • Added checks to ensure the Chosen only declare on valid empires
  • Corrected some auto-assignment weights for worker jobs when near a deficit
  • Corrected the Psionic and Latent Psionic species traits using each others’ icons
  • Fixed a COUNTRY_RESOURCE oos happening on the next month change after a hotjoin
  • Fixed a crash when switching between countries while in observer mode with the Leader View open.
  • Fixed a typo that was causing issues with AI leader assignment
  • Fixed a Void Dweller Prosperity tradition having an outdated tooltip
  • Fixed missing ORs in the AI weights for Defender of the Galaxy
  • Fixed revolts sometimes generating illegal empires
  • Fixed some typos in the triggers for colony types
  • Fixed the tooltip for recruiting a curator scientist
  • Lithoid farmers will no longer abandon their jobs if they live in an empire that uses food
  • Planets depopulated by Clone Army pops dying off from lack of Clone Vats should no longer permanently be rendered as having 0% habitability
  • Reduced the chance for Galactic Doorstep empires to find Skrand from 91% to 33% for your starting gateway and 67% for other repaired gateways
  • The Princeps Drone trait should no longer improve regular pop output.
  • The Quantum Catapult can now be correctly researched and built before researching Mega-Engineering, which is only required for the final stage
  • The Shallarian System will now spawn just out of reach of the Xenophobic Fallen Empire’s reach.
  • Your empire will no longer part with irreplaceable science ships such as the Vivairum no matter how much the Caravaneers ask.
  • The uplifted species trait will no longer mention being a pre-FTL.
  • Situation log and anomaly entries should no longer have part of their border missing when hovering over them.
  AI

  ​

  • Refactored government weights
  • Refactored the costs and budgets for colony ships, and the AI budgets for colonization using scripted variables
  • Fixed AI assigning the least suitable leaders to the council.
  • Improved AI weights for factory and forge worlds when running deficits
  • Improved automatic selection of colony types
  • Lowered Ai resettlement threshold to 0.45
  • The AI should no longer declare Hegemon Wars on empires that have a higher relative power than them, thus risking losing control of the Hegemony.
  UI / UX​
  • Add _IMPOSSIBLE_DESC optional localization key to show in the diplomatic action tooltip when the action is not possible (defaults to the normal _DESC key if the impossible version is not present)
  • Fixed planet pop growth tooltip showing growth speed triggered modifiers instead of growth reduction triggered modifiers.
  • Whether the planet migration tooltip shows immigration or emigration now takes into account push/pull multiplier modifiers.
  • Fixed emigration push total in planet migration tooltip not including multiplier modifiers.
  • Updated the Engineering Evolution icon
  • In Multiplayer, during a hotjoin, all clients now see the progress of hotjoiners
  • Fixed duplicated invalid origin text in empire creation trait tooltip.
  • Concept tooltips for tradition trees now have the name in the header.
  • deposit tooltips now display with an additional decimal for production and upkeep
  • Fixed authority tooltip showing missing DLC twice.
  • Planet unemployment icons in the Outliner now update immediately.
  • Tradition tree tooltips in the additional content browser no longer show the agenda that they unlock.
  • Added Civic Groups for restrictions in Civic and Origin tooltips
  • Autogenerated tooltips mentioning civic and origin requirements in empire creation will now automatically generate concept links to those civics or origins
  Modding

  ​

  • Government names now support scripted loc
  • Added use_planet_resource = yes/no for megastructures. This allows them to make use of a locations resources if they are located on top of a planet or star.
  • Added count_traits trigger
  • Building upgrade on_queued and on_unqueued now takes the upgraded version instead of the base building version.
  • Added an on action for when pops change ethics
  • civic swap_type can now check for origins as well in the empire select screen
  • Added scripted modifier for pop_cyborg_happiness.
  • Megastructures that are built on a planet will now have their nameplate stack alongside all the other planets.
  • Species portraits are now assigned to species classes through portrait_sets, not the species_classes. This allows a portrait to belong to multiple species classes
  • Added bound_to_planet_classes for habitability traits.
  • Added sprite configurations for portraits to apply the hologram VFX to pops and leaders
  • Pop Purge Speed modifier now counts as neutral
  • Adding inherit_country_building_modifiers = yes/no to block bonus building slots from the general country modifiers but also adding new generated modifiers for every planet class.
  • Added Exploit Faction mechanics, triggers and extortion_resource
  • Added trait_machine_unit check to is_robot_empire scripted trigger
  • Added advanced_authority_refresh = yes script effect to force the game to validate authority swaps
  • Adding a can_be_stolen variable to relics as a means to block certain relics from being stolen
  • Added create_synth_species_effect, set_synth_origin_traits_effect, set_synth_portrait_effect scripted effects
  • Added set_machine_habitability scripted effect
  • Added documentation for specifying authority swaps in the automatically generated concept tooltips
  • Adding scriptable alert usable to clarify any needed action that might be blocking a situation
  • Extra trait points and picks from civics can now be detected in the empire creation view
  • It is now possible to block specific resources from the market but still allow them for trade agreements.
  • Adding reset_decline effect to forcibly reset a planets decline
  • Adding outliner_trigger for megastructures to allow for more customization when they should be shown in the outliner.
  • Adding a new founder_species event target for the country scope
  • Adding persistent_faction to pop faction types, used to force factions to keep one pop until the faction fails it’s potential check
  • Added required_progress to scripted fleet actions
  • Added a space_battle_over on action for when a combat is over because of a lack of enemies left
  • You can now assign a ship size as a restriction for special projects.
  • Building and planet classes can now have building sets to more easily exclude buildings from planet classes
  • Adding never_lost parameter to ship sizes to easily make sure a ship is not instakilled in Emergency FTL.
  • Added crisis path database to make it possible to have multiple different crisis paths.
  • Added some small documentation for relics
  • terraforming_cost_mult now works on the planet scope
  • Converted modifiers that add jobs for industrial districts to inline scripts
  • custom_tooltip_with_modifiers in tradition swaps are now functional
  • Added can_add_overtuned_traits, can_add_droid_traits, can_add_synth_traits, owner_is_machine_intelligence, owner_is_individual_machine, owner_is_hive_empire and can_do_advanced_robo_modding scripted triggers for species modification
  • Fixed diplo weight tooltip showing base diplo weight twice if DIPLOMACY_WEIGHT_STANCE_FACTOR is not 0.
  • Fixed research bonus from research agreements not being applied if country_subject_technology_sharing_mult is applied.
  • Added scripted triggers for has_cybernetic_ascension, has_genetic_ascension, has_psionic_ascension, has_synthetic_ascension, and has_ascension_path
  • Regular empire capital buildings now use inline script for their job swaps.
  • Added the rl_barren_planets random list for system initializers
  • num_buildings trigger now accepts owner_type to allow counting holdings
  • You can now filter the trait count by trait cost. Renamed the trigger to count_species_trait to avoid unintended usage.
  • Added documentation file for the technology scripts.
  • Techs related to consumer goods now use the country_uses_consumer_goods = yes trigger
  • Player crisis paths are now unlocked by either Nemesis or The Machine Age
  • Added missing modifiers to building documentation.
  • The create template button is now controlled by the can_modify_species rule
  • Moved a bunch of scripted triggers for traits into the scripted_triggers_traits file
  • Added on_building_repaired on_action
  • Added ship_shield_penetration_add and ship_armor_penetration_add modifiers
  • Added triggered_species_modifier to species traits.
  • Adding a hidden variable to species rights options to allow the hiding of certain items from the UI lists
  • Adding weight variable to advanced authority swaps
  • Extending the authority swap to include election variables
  • Megastructure construction entities can be scaled.
  • Planet picture overrides will now update more reactively when changed
  • Converted all uses of is_fallen_machine_empire into is_fallen_empire_machine
  • Renamed is_berserk_fallen_machine_empire to is_fallen_empire_berserk_machine
  • Added documentation for namelists.
  • Removed unused “language” member in namelists.
  • Adding an on action for when starbases flip controller
  • Added customize_random_override to namelists.

  Now I’m passing this over to Alfray to give some more information on how to go about using some of the new features as a modder.

  More Modding Documentation​

  3.12 and The Machine Age have added a large amount of functionality which translates into a massive amount of modding improvements, due this we won’t be going into detail but give examples of various feature that can be used by modders.

  Crisis Paths (Requires Nemesis or The Machine Age)​

  In 3.12, we’ve added functionality to define multiple crisis paths. Where previously the Become the Crisis ascension perk would simply have the effect of “activate_crisis_progression = yes”, making use of the Crisis Levels, Objectives and Perks defined in their respective script files, now the effect instead uses activate_crisis_progression = . This allows multiple crisis paths to be defined, each with their own resource, objectives and perks (or even sharing any of these as you see fit).

  Authority Swaps (No DLC lock)​

  Back in Dev Diary #336 and Dev Diary #337, we detailed some of the Advanced Authorities available to the Cybernetic and Synthetic Ascension Paths in The Machine Age.

  As an example, here’s the base Imperial Authority with the Imperial Feedback Advanced Authority obtained via Synthetic Ascension.

  

  

  As you can imagine, these function much how tradition swaps function and offer a great deal of flexibility.

  Reactive Portraits (No DLC lock)​

  Reactive portraits and the paperdoll layering system they use were explained in Dev Diary #342, so here I’ll take the opportunity to showcase how these are handled in script. Using the Cybernetic Elf portrait as an example.

  

  As the reactive system only depends on various triggers, this isn’t required to be linked to an Ascension Path even though that was our intention for it. Additionally, due to the flexibility of scopes allowed for these triggers, reactive portraits can range from generalised customisation to incredible specific (e.g. the Chosen One God-Emperor having a unique mask/decal displayed).

  Portrait Sets, Categories and Species Classes (No DLC lock)​

  Prior to 3.12, each Species Class had a list of portraits (and conditional portraits) defined, with 3.12 this is changing so that each Species Class will have a defined Portrait Set and that Portrait Set will have a list of portraits and conditional portraits. However, for the purposes of showing portraits in empire creation, there are also Portrait Categories. This system allows us to class the new cybernetic and synthetic humanoid portraits in the Humanoid species class while still adding their own entries in the empire creation screen to showcase the new reactive portraits.

  What’s Next​

  The Machine Age will be releasing next Tuesday, and as there are holidays in Sweden next week, our next dev diary (The Art of the Machine Age, Part II) is planned for May 16th.

  At 1430 CEST today a bunch of us will be on /r/Stellaris for a Reddit AMA! (Ask Me Anything) Come ask us stuff!

  See you soon!

  The Machine Age will be arriving on Tuesday, May 7th, and is available for pre-purchase on its own or as part of Stellaris: Season 08!