by Eladrin

It’s been seven years since Stellaris released, and with this anniversary and three hundredth dev diary, I’m happy to bring you the Stellaris 3.8 “Gemini” update and the Galactic Paragons expansion.

Here are the release notes for the update, which will be going live later today. Until then, you can still Wishlist Galactic Paragons here.

SPOILER: STELLARIS 3.8.1 “GEMINI” AND GALACTIC PARAGONS RELEASE NOTES
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#################### Galactic Paragons ######################​
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Galactic Paragons

• Unique Council Roles: Specialized roles and benefits are included in Galactic Paragons to expand upon the new Council Mechanics in Stellaris! Find dozens of unique council roles based on your civics and government types, and unlock additional positions as your empire evolves.
• New Dynamic Leaders: Recruit, improve, and follow the leaders of your empire through the ages! You may shape them by picking their traits, selecting their veteran class, and guide them towards their destiny, up until they retire – or perish!
• Meet Galactic Heroes: Attract paragons of renown to your council: unique leaders with their own art, events, and stories may join your empire and bring their own benefits to your government. Or, discover four Legendary Paragons with intricate event chains and unique mechanics!
• New Traditions, Civics, And More:
• A new “Under One Rule” Origin that tells the tale of the leader who founded your empire
• Eight new Civics focused on leadership, from immortalizing the personalities of leaders past in digital archives to heavily optimized council selection via corporate charter
• 12 new Veteran Classes
• Hundreds of new Leader Traits
• Two new Tradition Trees, giving players new edicts and improved leaders
• New ships, art, and story content
• 6 new achievements introduced

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#################### VERSION 3.8.1 – Gemini ######################​
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FEATURES

• Added two Cooperative modes, allowing up to five players per empire. More information can be found in Stellaris Dev Diary #293.
  * Cooperative PvE can be initiated from the main menu – all players that hotjoin the hosted game will join the primary player’s empire. This mode is primarily intended for teaching new players or for lower intensity cooperative gameplay.

  *Cooperative PvP can be allowed by the host of a standard multiplayer game. When enabled, empires can open themselves up to allow other players to help control their empire. We expect this game mode to be useful for competitive team play.

  Please note that Cooperative modes are still considered to be a beta, and may be less stable than standard multiplayer, or may have some unusual experiences. We will continue to polish and refine Cooperative mode over the next few patches.​

• Empire Council: Ruling a Galactic Empire is hard work, and your council of trusty leaders is there to help you. Base-game Stellaris now includes a ruling council, where up to three leaders will assist you in ruling your empire – your Ruler, your Head of Research, and your Defense Minister.
  * Each leader gives bonuses to their area of expertise, which grow increasingly more powerful as they level up over time.

  * Gestalts will have a collection of immortal “nodes”, that will level up and gain new traits over time, which we feel better suits them thematically.

• Ruler Creator: Added a new step in Empire Creation that permits the selection of your ruler’s appearance and starting trait(s).
• Renowned Leaders: Updated several leaders to use new Leader systems:
  * Updated Tuborek with new effects to use the Paragon System.
  * Updated Reth Unddol with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
  * Updated Gray’s Menu and effects to use Paragon Systems.
  * Updated the Caretaker with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
  * Updated the S875.1 Warform with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
  * Updated the Oracle with new visuals and effects to use the Paragon System.
• Ground Combat and Bombardment Changes: Several changes have been made to armies and bombardment.
  * Army Builder tab added to starbases, which allows easier creation of Assault Armies across a sector.
  * An army can be set as a Rally Point – new troops will automatically try to merge with this fleet (regardless of whether they were queued with the Army Builder or the old Recruit button).
  * Planets can now select whether or not to Deploy in Orbit any newly recruited armies.
  * Planets can now be taken through Orbital Bombardment if all defending troops have been killed. A policy can be set if you wish to refuse this form of surrender, and planets will not surrender to genocidal opponents.
  * Bombardment is significantly more damaging than it used to be. More pops will die, and more buildings and districts will be ruined.
  * Orbital Bombardment will now scale with the amount of ships bombarding, the first 100 fleet size ships will do full damage, after that each additional 100 fleet size will add 70% of that efficiency. For example, 300 fleet capacity worth of ships will deal 100% + 70% + (0,7^2 = 49%) = 219% total worth of bombardment damage.
  * Bombardment effects are scaled based on the number of pops, buildings, and planet size. Small dense planets will suffer greater losses than large, sparsely populated planets.
  * Ground Combat is also more devastating to planets than it used to be, but much less so than bombarding.
  * The effect of collateral damage from different army types have also been adjusted, previously the collateral damage on army types was a linear value and not a multiplier, which meant that in practice high damage high collateral units like Xenomorphs could effectively do less collateral damage on the planet compared to normal troops because they would kill the enemy troops very quickly. This is no longer the case as the collateral damage modifier now acts as a multiplier on any damage dealt.
  * Planetary Capital buildings now spawns 0/4/8/16 defensive armies for free based on the tier of the building.
• Sector Editor: It is now possible to edit Sectors in the Planets and Sectors screen. Systems can be freely moved between sectors as long as they are in range of the Sector Capital. Sector Capitals must now be at least four jumps away from any others.
• Customizable Menu: It is now possible to rearrange the list of options in the left side menu, by pressing the new Cog icon at the top. This will also correspondingly change the hotkeys to open these menus, allowing you to rebind these menu items to whichever F1-F10 key you prefer to have them on.
• Customizable Message Notifications and Toasts: Messages and notifications can now be customized to suit your needs.
  * Added a new message type called a “toast”, which pops up and disappears automatically after a brief period of time.
  * Settings -> Messages, Ctrl+Click, or cogs (on certain messages) will open the Message Settings menu.
  * Messages can be disabled, enabled, or set to automatically pause the game.
• Fleet and Ship Designer:
  * Merged into tabs of the same screen.
  * Now displays a longer list of fleets.
  * Copy Fleet Template and Overwrite Fleet Template features added.
  * Delete + Enter will delete a fleet.
• Science Ship Automation: You can now enable or disable more Science Ship automation modules.
  * Explore Systems – will explore the galaxy by entering systems and discover any planets and hyperlanes in there
  * Survey Systems – will survey new systems the science ship enters
  * Investigate Anomalies – will automatically research anomalies
  * Excavate Archaeology Sites – will automatically excavate Archaeology sites
  * Research Special Projects – will automatically research special projects

IMPROVEMENTS

• Added new Capital Designations for non-Gestalt empires. (Factory Capital, Forge Capital, Trade Capital, and Extraction Capital).
• Added unique textures for Mercury, Venus, Neptune and Uranus for the Sol system.
• Added unique textures for Earth and Mars when terraformed based off of available heightmap data.
• Improved animation for gas giants.
• Added a new anomaly: The Orb.
• Added a special solar system protected by the Lone Defender.
• Added a decision to clear the wreckage on a Broken Shackles starting planet in the event that they are conquered before they enact the Memorial to the Unshackled decision.
• Improved accuracy of tooltips on the galaxy setting screen and implemented experimental nested tooltip functionality.
• The mind-wiped species from On the Shoulders of Giants will now have the Forcefully Devolved trait.
• There is now a 1% chance that a pre-ftl civilization will spawn with the Forcefully Devolved trait.
• Added hotkey ‘u’ to upgrade fleet button.
• Broken Shackles empires will now have their starting Minister of Defense and Head of Research be recruited from any of the species in their empire.
• Added keyboard command for jumping to the next day, ‘.’
• Added Ship Section Templates to the Ship Designer which allows for easier creation of designs of a certain role, such as carriers or missile focused designs.
• Auto-designed ships and those designed by the ship role button will now only equip archaeo-components if your empire has the Archaeo-Engineers AP.
• You can now hotjoin an MP game to control the Daemonic Incursion.

BALANCE

• The Khanate Successor origin now unlocks raiding bombardment.
• Fallen Empire starting rulers are now level 10.
• Species traits that gave +N leader level cap now give reduced leader upkeep and reduced maximum leader negative traits.
• Reduced focused capital production bonuses from +20% to +15% following dev diary feedback.
• Random leader starting age range increased to 25-35
• Bonuses for many Authorities changed. Previous benefits such as the old form of Agendas and Mandates have been removed.
  * Democracies focus on their factions, with +10% Faction Approval and they Reset Government Reform and Policy cooldowns following elections. Their ruler provides +2% Faction Unity and +5 Edicts Fund per level. The people have spoken!
  * Oligarchies focus on their ruling council, and have +2 Effective Councilor Skill. Their ruler provides +5% Councilor Experience Gain and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
  * Dictatorships focus on their ruler, who provides -2% Pop Amenities Usage and +10 Edict Fund per level.
  * Imperial empires focus on their Capital System, which produces +10% Resources from jobs. Their ruler provides +0.25 Maximum Influence from Power Projection and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
  * Megacorps have +20% Commercial Pact Efficiency, but +50% Empire Size from Planets. Their ruler provides +2% Branch Office Value and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
  * Hive Minds have +25% Pop Growth Speed and -25% Empire Size Effect. Their ruler grants +2% Monthly Unity and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
  * Machine Intelligences have +1 Pops When Establishing Colonies, +1 Mechanical Pop Assembly, +10% Mining Station Output, +50% Empire Size from Planets, and 50% Pop Growth Reduction. Their ruler grants -3% Empire Size from Pops and +5 Edicts Fund per level.
• Lowered base Minor Artifact storage capacity to 2,000. The Facility of Archaeostudies increases this by 2,000 or by 4,500 if the Archaeo-Engineers AP is taken.
• Criminal Syndicates now have -20% to Branch Office cost.
• Broken Shackles laborer jobs no longer benefit from modifiers applying to artisans or metallurgists.
• Broken Shackles scavengers are now considered researchers for the purpose of modifiers.
• Gave the Grand Herald archaeo-tech components.
• Rebalanced the “Shroud-Touched” traits that can be gained by leaders going through a Shroud Tunnel.
• Commercial Pacts now give High Economic Intel on Colonies.
• Empires with the Payback origin gain a damage bonus against ships belonging to militarily superior empires.
• The Seize Galatron casus belli is now unlocked the first time the Galatron is used, instead of upon acquisition.
• Trade collection will now prioritize the capital and then sector capitals if they are in range, even if other starbases are closer, resulting in overall greatly reduced piracy from trade routes if collection is there.
• Curator order now offers Gestalts a Trait instead of a Scientist.
• Changed Technocracy bonus to award Scientists a random expertise trait in addition to their other traits.

AI

• Massively reduced the number of starbases assigned to cloaking detection for the AI.
• Fanatical Spiritualists will now always outlaw robot workers.
• AI attitude updates now happen only monthly and on diplomatic actions.
• Relaxed AI budget requirements for orbital ring upgrades.
• Allowed AI to build economically useful orbital ring buildings without a matching designation.
• AI takes into account planetary production impact of possible orbital ring buildings when considering building orbital rings.
• Stopped AI from never fully re-evaluating ship designs if it had no preferences specified in its AI personality.
• Fixed an issue where AI would calculate a forecast of planet build queue items using a pop which could not work jobs provided by these buildings leading to incorrect results.
• AI is now much more restrictive about building gene clinics.
• AI will now prioritize building new starbases at the Sector Capital more.
• AI will now micromanage their enforcer jobs by using the scripted logic provided by the Planet Automation System.
• Fixed an issue where AI would not attack pirate stations in their empire.
• Ai will now resettle pops with low habitability to planets with higher habitability in the early game.
• Adjusted AI alloy spending budget to be a bit better at spending alloys on starbases and colony ships at the same time.
• Fixed several issues where AI would build or upgrade amenity or crime buildings even when they had already forbidden jobs from these buildings.
• AI trader persona are now the only ones who will build trade hub starbases and they will now only build them in sector capitals.
• Improved peace time AI for upgrading fleets and patrolling trade routes.
• AI empires that has Thrifty perk on their main species are now also eligible for the Peaceful Traders and Ruthless Capitalists AI personalities.

STABILITY

• Tooltips will no longer be shown when the game has lost focus (tabbed out or any other focus loss). This will prevent crashes caused by tooltips being generated in contexts where they aren’t expected.

UI

• Disabled tutorial in Multiplayer (but not coop PvE).
• Auto-close auto-opened anomaly window if the science ship has already started researching the anomaly.
• DLC icons on the empire creation screen now appear in the same size and in order of releases.
• The popup when you are kicked or banned or the server is lost will now appear in front of other windows.
• Truncate long empire, government and species names in hotjoin.
• Make scrolling smoother in some places.
• Display special project energy cost in situation log.
• Auto Track Log Entries setting is saved in the save game.
• Fix certain windows (e.g. ship orders) being too small compared to the sprite tiling, which caused graphical bugs.
• Removed the in-game web browser. The game will now use the system browser instead.
• Adjust chat input and chat entry to the new chat window size.
• Changed player ready string to text icon.
• Planet view no longer closes when opening other UIs like the pop resettlement or market view.

BUG FIXES

• The Espionage Operation “Imperium: Target Seditionists” now correctly aborts if the Imperium falls.
• Fixed incorrect costs for Caravaneer deals.
• Payback: fixed incorrect tooltip in “Flagship Updated” event.
• Broken Shackles: fixed “First Contact with MSI” modifier not disappearing under certain circumstances.
• MSI can now use raiding bombardment with fleets hired from mercs.
• Fixed checkbox tooltips in “Host server” window not appearing.
• Fixed some scoping errors that prevented the “Indoctrinate Society” operation from working correctly.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to do two jump drive orders back to back by queuing them up via shift clicking.
• Insight technologies should no longer be randomly awarded from events such as Old with Defects.
• Removed Broken Shackles being scripted to start without a shipyard.
• Pledging Secret Fealty to another empire now gives them +20 Intel on and knowledge of all of your diplomatic pacts.
• Fixed the trapped in the storm special project stating the planet is trapped in a storm on the planet instead of the science ship being trapped in the storm.
• Fixed “Cross-platform play” checkbox sometimes not being checked by default.
• Choosing to hand over system ownership during the course of Pre-FTL Observation event “Among Us” now correctly grants you a Claim on that system.
• Removed erroneous custom tooltip for the finisher effect of Psionic traditions.
• Fix an issue where starbases would do cloaking detection for the wrong empire for 1 day.
• System and star name should now match even if the player selects an origin that has a special starting system.
• Enclaves should no longer keep offering you their services if you become a fanatical purifier.
• If you are a corporate angler when you finish the Fear of the Dark story line you will now become a regular angler.
• You will no longer get stuck with two unuseable civics if you become a Fanatical Purifier while a Barbaric Despoiler.
• You can no longer become a Fanatical Purifier while the Galactic Custodian or Galactic Emperor.
• A synthetically ascended empire should no longer refer to their own pops as having owners.
• Fixed some grammar in the Hivemind Voidspawn reanimation event.
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized version of MSI in the initial interaction between a Broken Shackles and Payback empire.
• Fixed an unlocalized string for the Reanimated Tiyanki Matriarch.
• Removed a double “be” from a machine become the crisis event.
• Multiple Tuboreks should no longer be hidden inside the shielded worlds.
• Fixed Status Quo in a Subsidiary war subjugating the wrong empire.
• Fixed incorrect calculation used for Offspring amenities.
• Lithoid pre-sapients “working” in zoos now correctly eat minerals.
• Fixing truncated build queue items in the starbase view.
• Former pre-FTL worlds will no longer display the technological age of the former civilization during colonization.
• Added a new description to the Broken Shackles Homecoming event if the world is a tomb world.
• The “Direct Join” window now blocks other input.
• Corrected the Ancient Target Scrambler tech not stating that it unlocks the Ancient Target Scrambler ship component.
• The Radio Telescope Array now reduces the chance of Pre-FTL awareness decay instead of increasing it.
• Archaeoshields should now properly provide their shield hardening bonus.
• Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
• Fixing custom diplomatic action sounds playing for unrelated empires.
• Fixed materialist culture workers (and death chroniclers) not having the effects of the Charismatic or Repugnant traits.
• Added missing background for Ironman game setting.
• Added missing “gateway” icons and tooltips to cloaking and detection technologies.
• Changing policies now correctly removes diplomatic pacts with pre-ftl civilizations.
• Fixed issues where sectors would not always include all systems within range, also fixed related issue where sector map mode would sometimes draw borders between systems in the same sector
• Deleting templates in the fleet manager will no longer reset the scrollbar, added ‘Delete’ hotkey to template removal.
• The “Host server” window now blocks other input.
• Prevented joining full MP games.
• Fix MP game browser listing full games even if “Not full” is checked.
• Species with servile trait can no longer be given the Full Military Service rights and thus generate leaders.
• Ringworlds now use empire color.

MODDING

• Add_random_research_option script effect now ignores Insight technologies by default.
• Added the creator scope for leaders, allowing you to scope to a leader’s country of origin.
• Added reset_policy_cooldowns = yes effect.
• Added the special_max_amount = yes/no parameter for resources.
• Council position support use of conditional_tooltip = “LOCKEY” to display custom tooltips for triggers you define in is_leader_possible = { }, triggers defined here are not otherwise shown in the council position tooltip.
• Scripted triggers may now generate up to one automatic event option icon each
• Calling GetAge in localization should no longer show the leaders age if marked as hidden
• Added controls to the fleet imgui view and added jump drive information to ships
• Using the ImGui view shortcut for selectables (ctrl+alt+right click) on the same selectable when it’s already open, will now close the view.
• Added expansion_planner = yes/no for districts. This controls if the district type should be visible in the expansion planner or not and defaults to no.
• Views containing longer texts will now automatically reload when changes in localization are detected.
• Added damage_vs_superior_empires_mult modifier
• Add `remove_from_federation` script effect
• Removed support for the “Major” flag and potential trigger in events.
• You can also use from for the ship design in section template ai weights
• You can now scope to a ship’s design using ‘design = {}’
• Added has_role trigger for ship designs
• You can now refer to the ship design using “from” in ship components. It may have incomplete information, but it will have at the very least the ship’s designated role stored in it.
• Added copy_flags_and_variables_from effect to copy all flags and variables from one scope to another
• Replaced set_is_female with set_gender
• Renamed country_mia_time_mult to fleet_mia_time_mult so that you can apply it at leader or fleet level too
• You can now use “initializer = random” in the spawn_system effect
• New trigger “num_candidate_supported”, returns number of times an election candidate has been supported this election.
• Removed add_ruler_trait and remove_ruler_trait in favor of using add_trait and remove_trait instead
• Add random_ruler to create_leader’s class field. This will randomize between valid ruler classes for the empire
• Removed the ruler specific class. The ruler can now have other
• Kill_leader leader effect now accepts ruler = instead
• Has_ethic trigger now works on pop_faction scope too, returning their guiding_ethic.
• Added on_planet_returned on action which triggers when an owner of a planet regains control of it
• Made species_classes overwrite extendably too
• AI economic plans now overwrite in an “extendable” way, so you can define a further “basic_economy_plan” which adds an extra subplan, and it will append this subplan to the existing basic_economy_plan
• Ownership limits now no longer overwrite the full object but are instead “extendable”, which means you can define a second “default” and put an entry in, and the game will add that to Vanilla’s definition of “default”
• Activating an Agenda triggers OnAction “on_agenda_finished”.
• Fixed faction_approval not working as country modifier.

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Since the last anniversary, let’s look at some of what we’ve accomplished together.

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Last May we released the “Cepheus” update and the Overlord expansion, introducing the Situations system, updating subjugation mechanics, adding five new Origins, and a huge amount of empire emblems, backgrounds, and flag colors.

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In September, the “Fornax” update and the Toxoids Species Pack added new difficulty settings, allowed you to spawn all the crises, and brought us the epic tale of the Toxic God.

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Fleet combat rebalancing was the primary focus of the “Orion” update in late November, which also added some new galaxy shapes and added roles to the ship designer.

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The First Contact Story Pack started this year alongside the “Canis Minor” update, adding Cloaking to Stellaris and improving Pre-FTL civilizations, while also adding some challenging Origins and focusing on game stability.

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And now the “Gemini” update and Galactic Paragons adds the Council, revamps leader mechanics, updates armies and bombardment, and introduces two cooperative game modes (in a beta state).
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Over the year we also had a number of Open Betas. Many thanks to all of you that played in them and helped us find as many issues as possible.

We’ve had a busy year!​

We’ll be skipping this Thursday’s Dev Diary to keep the team focused on post-release support, and will be returning to our regular once-a-week cadence. Since next Thursday is a holiday in Sweden, the next Stellaris Dev Diary will be on Tuesday, May 16th. After that, we plan on returning to our normal Thursday slot.

See you then!

Please note that save file compatibility between versions is not guaranteed.

If you experience crashing or other issues, first disable all mods and start a new save. If the issue persists, please report it on the Bug Report forums.