by Eladrin

Hello everyone!

The Cosmic Storms Mechanical Expansion is nearly here, so today we’ve got preliminary release notes and some of the Custodian changes.

Cosmic Storms is going to be released next Tuesday, on September 10th.

As part of the Custodian changes in 3.13 ‘Vela’, we’ve made some changes to how some planetary deposits for rare resources are handled.

The deposits that previously gave access to Crystal Mines, Gas Extraction Wells and Mote Harvesting Traps buildings, now instead increase the number of mining districts available on the planet and, after researching the technology to extract the relevant resource, add a small amount of resource production to miners on that planet.

Additionally, we’ve buffed the Betharian Power Plant to increase the energy produced by Technician Jobs.

Much like how Resort Worlds were updated earlier this year, we have taken the time to revisit both Penal Colonies and Thrall worlds.

Penal Colonies now both reduce crime across your empire while giving access to unique Prison Industrial Districts. These allow you to employ worker strata pops to produce alloys and consumer goods.

Thrall Worlds on the other hand have taken inspiration from the countless examples across science fiction of elite battle thrall armies and give access to the Battle Thrall District. Armies trained on a Thrall World will start with additional XP and Battle Thrall jobs will increase the damage your armies do.

And now, on to the release notes.

• Eight dynamic new storm types:
  • Electric, Particle, Gravity, Magnetic, Radiant, Stardust, Shroud, and Nexus storms
• New Origin: Storm Chasers
• Three new Civics
  • Astrometeorology
  • Planetscapers
  • Storm Devotion
• New Ascension Perk: Galactic Weather Control
• Weather Forecast Map Mode
• Two new Precursors
  • The adAkkaria Convention of Benevolence
  • The Inetian Traders
• New Technologies and Buildings
• New Planetary Deposits, Modifiers and Anomalies following Storm Aftermaths
• New GalCom Resolutions and Edicts
• New Events and Anomalies

Improvements

• Update to Thrall Worlds, adding two new slave-focused districts, Battle Thrall Jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Update to Prison Worlds – adding two new penal-focused districts, five new jobs, and improvements to tooltips and theme
• Xenophobe ethics now swaps to providing pop assembly when appropriate
• The location of empire-scope special projects will move to the new capital if the empire’s capital changes
• Gestalt Empires are now allowed to decide on their land appropriation policy, and are no longer forced to populate every planet
• Corvee System now gives -15% resettlement cost for Individualist Machines
• Standardized volume of all advisor VO lines
• War allies will be able to use wormholes, hyper relays, and gateways in each other’s territory even if their borders are closed
• Removed the galaxy-wide Space Storm introduced in 2.7 “Wells”

UI

• Updated the megastructure selection UI
  • Improved tooltips in the megastructure selection UI
  • When selecting a location for Arc Furnace stage 1, the tooltip shows the number of deposit sites in the system
  • When selecting a location for a Habitat Central Complex, the tooltip shows orbital capacities in the system
  • Fixed tooltip not showing when selecting a location to build a megastructure
• Map icons in galaxy and system view no longer truncate the resource amount when between 0 and 1
• The tooltip that mentions if a civic is locked is now red instead of orange
• Enabled mouse scrolling in the research completed window
• Extended the minimum width of the “Veteran Level Reached!” window in case too few options are available to choose from
• Fixed some overlapping UI in the Empire Creation screens
• Fixed position of “Cross-platform play” checkbox on MS Store
• Updated the Map Modes UI
  • The Players map mode is no longer available when observing in singleplayer
  • The Players and Trade Routes map mode buttons are now disabled instead of hidden when they’re unavailable
  • Fixed Players mapmode not graying out AI empires in some cases
  • The Unions map mode is now a regular map mode instead of a toggle

Bugfix

• Fixed the placeholder icon for the diplomatic message to request to join the galactic imperium
• Made AI capable of building planetary shields
• The Chthonian Planet, Extensive Moon System and Carbon World modifiers will now only add their mineral deposits to the planet the first time they are surveyed instead of every time they are surveyed
• Corrected tooltip and loyalty effects for the Ministry of Acquisition
• Individualistic Machine empires should no longer get an event intended for Organics
• Fixed the Nanite Intercessor being present in ship previews in the empire creator
• Fixed cyberpunk advisor lines for council agenda ready and council agenda available notifications
• Fixed fleets’ cloaking strength sometimes not updating when ships’ cloaking strength changes due to modifiers
• Fixed juggernauts not showing the fleet bombardment button
• Election auto pausing and unpausing now functions like other event pop ups
• Removed the double modifiers for Defense platforms from Ancient Shield Overcharger
• Removed serviles from the can_think trigger due to unintended knock on effects
• If an arc furnace is built around a potential Contingency Hub, when the planet becomes their hub, the arc furnace is correctly destroyed
• Fixed uncovered deposits not being removed when an arc furnace is destroyed
• Colossus special project will reward the original country that started the project instead of the current planet owner
• Leaders who are researching an anomaly or project or on cooldown can be assigned to the council
• Roccan Resistance and Free Peoples of the Fall genders changed from indeterminate to default
• The species of planetary defense armies will get updated after species modification
• AI empires will select ethics required by their origin
• All starbase types now explode when destroyed instead of blinking out of existence
• Fixed numerous instances, such as when establishing an embassy, where the game would load the countries home planet instead of their capital
• Game should no longer crash when an empire you had a trade deal with is destroyed during a war
• Various Out Of Sync fixes
• War allies will be able to use each wormholes in each other’s territory even if their borders are closed

Modding

• Implemented “on_storm_encountered” on_action when a country is affected for the first time by a new storm
• Added on_storm_entered_system on-action
• Added on_storm_left_system on-action, for when a cosmic storm has left a solar system
• Added support for generate_random_name = yes to the spawn_planet effect
• Refactored Arcology industrial districts into Inline Scripts
• Replaced all “has_authority” checks with scripted triggers making it easier to add new authorities
• Added the awakening_not_allowed country flag that blocks fallen empires from awakening
• Added the keep_deposit_on_terraform deposit flag to make sure deposits don’t go missing when you terraform
• Added “visible” trigger to map modes
• Added “tutorial” member to map modes
• Added is_infertile trigger
• Added support for displaying comma and period as hotkeys in button tooltips
• Added planet_crime_floor_add modifier that sets a minimum level of crime on a planet
• Added fail trigger for special projects + documentation
• Added ‘mod_name_affix’ to create_species effect
• Added num_asteroid_belts trigger to check the number of asteroids in a system
• Added game rules for founder_species_uses_growth_speed, founder_species_uses_organic_assembly and founder_species_uses_assembly
• Added game rule to force visibility on fleets for a specific system

With the release planned for next Tuesday, our next expected dev diary will be on September 19th.

See you then!

Pre-purchase Stellaris: Cosmic Storms alone or with a discount as part of Stellaris: Season 08!​