Stellaris Dev Diary #334 - "Eridanus" Next Steps

by Eladrin

Hi everyone!

Today we’ll be taking a look at the state of the game, the upcoming 3.11.2 patch, talk about the Subscription FAQ, look at the Q&A transcript, and give a taste of what’s next.

Let’s get to it.

State of the Game​ The Stellaris 3.11.1 “Eridanus” update was released last week, and I’m happy to say that the build appears quite stable crash-wise.

The number of crash reports is very low for a release, with approximately 90% of the ones we are getting being due to mods that haven’t been updated. Of these, more than half are specifically related to mods that affect the Galaxy Settings screen. Metrics so far show that Multiplayer seems to be significantly more stable than 3.10.4 as well, though an issue has been raised regarding observer mode causing major performance issues in multiplayer that we're currently looking into.

The Custodian Team is currently working on a 3.11.2 update including some of the things that you’ve all reported, preliminarily scheduled for release next Tuesday, March 12th.

SOME THINGS PLANNED FOR 3.11.2

Balance

• The Opener for Domination now gives +5% Worker Output and +5% Slave Output instead of +10% Slave Output so Egalitarians and Xenophiles aren’t sad.
  
• Versatility Operational Proxies now gives +1 Unity production to Maintenance Drones so that Rogue Servitors aren't left out.
  
• Decreased the cost to study (-25%) and pacify (-40%) space fauna.

Bugfixes

• Fixed Federation Emissaries and GalCom Delegates not assigning correctly.
  
• Acquiring the Colonization Drones from the Chemical Wasteland Astral Rift will no longer lead to discovering Noxious Swamps (or other natural blockers) on Habitats (or other planets that shouldn't support these blockers)
  
• Corrected Adaptability Enhanced Recycling tooltip listing a 10% reduction instead of the 15% reduction.
  
• Corrected the finisher effect for Domination giving -15% Empire Size from Pops in some cases
  
• The finisher for Diplomacy now correctly says it gives +10% Diplomatic Weight instead of +10 Diplomatic Weight
  
• Fixed an issue where the "On the Origins of Nanites" special project didn't spawn.
  
• The Chosen will now declare a war of Cleansing on whoever breaches their wormhole
  
• Fixed habitat capital buildings given the wrong number of defensive armies
  
• Mining districts on machine worlds should no longer claim to give scrap miner drone jobs
  
• Fixed anomaly.7200 having repeated flags in their switch.
  
• Cartographer II and Cartographer III are now correctly recognised as councilor traits
  
• Fixed modifiers to mining and research station upkeep incorrectly attempting to reduce the upkeep of the planet they were orbiting
  
• Science ship auto explore feature with astral rifts sometimes skipped unexplored ones
  
• Fixed the icon for the Great Researcher trait
  
• Fixed Holy Covenants not giving High Priest jobs in some cases
  
• The Shallash system will now spawn properly again.
  
• You will no longer be able to engage in pre-FTL diplomacy with pre-FTLs not within your borders
  
• Homicidal empires will now properly annex pre-FTLs that are foolish enough to become space faring.
  
• Bio-trophies are no longer affected by Noxious Twice.
  
• Fix lack of evasion on sapient torpedo comp.
  

UI

• Fixes the background selector for rulers being set incorrectly in the leader category of the background selectors

Stability

• Fixed crash upon startup that could be caused by write-protected user directory.
  
• Fixed CTD that sometimes happens when finishing species modification.
  
• Fixed CTD when using console command dump_event_data and the output file is not writable
  
• Fixed CTD in leader names after loading a savegame
  
• Fixed CTD that may occur when updating diplomacy for countries without diplomacy

More on the Stellaris Expansion Subscription​ We’ve created an FAQ[forum.paradoxplaza.com] about the Stellaris Expansion Subscription option, I've included it here:

We've gathered up some of the most frequently asked questions from the launch of the Stellaris Expansion Subscription.

1. Will I lose access to my existing content purchases?
   No. All existing purchases will remain, and you will not have to sign up to the subscription service to maintain your access to your previously purchased content.
   
2. Will future content be subscription-only?
   No! Our main model will remain focused around expansions and other content, as we have done so far. We have introduced a subscription service to lower the barrier to entry for new players.
   
3. Who asked for this?
   We are experimenting with this additional option to provide players access to the full Stellaris experience. We are simply offering another choice, as we understand that many players would be interested in trying Stellaris with all the content without having to commit to purchasing all the existing content.
   
4. Why did you not just create content bundles?
   We already have bundles available that we have designed with the help of our community. We are happy with the currently available offerings, but may look into this again in the future.
   
5. If I play multiplayer with the subscription, does everyone else in my lobby still get to use my content for that game?
   Yes! Subscription ownership of the content comes with all the features that a regular purchase does. You can share the content from the subscription in multiplayer with your friends that only have the base-game.
   
6. Are there any plans to expand the subscription service to other stores/platforms?
   No current plans at this time, but something on our radar long-term.
   
7. Does the subscription model signal the end of development on Stellaris?
   We currently have several years of Stellaris development planned.
   
8. Will individual content still be available for sale?
   Yes! Stellaris content will continue to be available to purchased individually, as it always has been.
   
9. Why isn’t there a discounted price for the subscription for players who already own some/all of the content?
   The Stellaris subscription is geared towards allowing new players more avenues into the full Stellaris experience. As such, we attempted to keep the initial public offering as simple as possible. We may look at expanding our offerings in the future, however.
   
10. Why can't I buy Stellaris content while my subscription is active?
    When you have an ongoing subscription, you are technically considered to have the content in your library. As such, stores will stop you from purchasing a DLC for the same account twice (since the DLC is already in your library). Once the subscription expires, you can again go back to purchasing content normally.

We hope this provides more clarity into our process and alleviates some of the concerns of the Community with regards to the Expansion Subscription. If you have further questions, feel free to ask them in the thread below and we will do our best to provide answers!

For several years, the Expansion Subscriptions on some of our other games have proven very popular with new players, which was the major reason we wanted to bring the concept over to Stellaris. As Crusader Kings III's Chapters have likewise been extremely popular with their more experienced players, we're also looking into bundling future content together in a similar manner to make it easier for our veterans to get the new content at a discount.

Discord Q&A Transcript​ On February 22nd, we held a Q&A on Discord. The team answered 247 questions and only got a little trolly.

For a transcript of the questions that were answered, please visit the Paradox forums[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

What Else?​ I promised to give a teaser about what the internal team has been working on. Here you go.



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Next week's dev diary will be later than usual as well.