[2023] Stellaris Dev Diary #301 - Galactic Paragons is out, what's next?

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

by Eladrin

Hi all!

Galactic Paragons and the first hotfix have been released on all PC platforms, and we're working on a balance and bugfixing patch that we're currently targeting for the end of the month. Please keep on providing your thoughts and feedback.

Based on the feedback you've all provided thus far, we are creating a plan for fixes and improvements. While it's possible that we may release a stability hotfix before the balance patch, it will not include any design changes.

Cooperative Mode and Out of Syncs
The 3.8.2 hotfix took care of a number of out of sync issues, but there are more to hunt down. The programming team is focusing heavily on clearing these up, so every bit of information we can get is helpful.

If you're running into frequent out of sync issues, you can help us out a lot by having the host add these startup parameters to their game:
-randomlog -randomlog_stack=5 -randomlog_frames=3​
Then, if you run into an Out of Sync, please post in the Bug Report forum[forum.paradoxplaza.com] and give us the Host's OOS logs as well as at least one of the clients that the popup mentioned. (OOS logs can be found in Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\oos near your save games.) Any details you can provide about what you were doing at the time is also helpful.

This setting has some performance implications (which is why it's not on by default), but if you're running into OOSes reliably, it can really help us track them down.

Tell Us More About the Balance Patch
Here are a few selected notes.

SPOILER: A FEW OF THE THINGS PLANNED FOR 3.8.X
[expand type=showmore]Balance

• Legendary leaders no longer count towards Leader Capacity.
  
• Admirals that command fleets hired from marauders no longer count towards your Leader Capacity.
  
• Added the Leader of Opportunity trait, leaders that have this trait do not count towards Leader Capacity while under Level 4.
  
• Assigned some event spawned leaders the Leader of Opportunity trait.
  
• Aptitude Tradition "Champions of the Empire" now gives bonus per Leaders' levels.
  
• Effect is now a flat -2 Empire Size per Governor level, and 0.5% Exp per Scientist level and 2 Naval capacity per Admiral/General level.
  
• Autocannons are no longer valued at three times their intended military power.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where ships would sometimes stop following its target when they entered a hyperlane
  
• Leaders can no longer start the game with traits that produce resources. This should stop machine leaders from keeping a bonsai tree garden as a hobby.

AI

• AI will now wait until it has at least 5 planets and 25 years before choosing a specialization designation for its homeworld

Performance

• Leader view performance optimizations

[/expand]

There will, of course, be more.

Next Week
Our next dev diary will be Thursday, May 25th, when we'll be going over a more complete list of the preliminary patch notes.

See you then!