by Eladrin

Read this post on the Paradox forums! | Dev replies here!

[Note: these patch notes are too long to fit into a Reddit post, so please consider reading them on the forums. — LadyDz.]

The Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta is drawing to a close, and we’re currently building a release candidate.

We’ve temporarily pulled Exclusive Harvesting Rights from 4.5 – your feedback from the Open Beta made it clear that it needed more balancing time, but expect it to return in a future release.

4.5.0 ‘Cygnus’ has the most bugfix entries of any Stellaris patch, with more bugfixes than our two previous bugfix record holders – 2.0.2 and 3.0.1 – combined. Keep reporting them and the Custodians will keep fixing them.

Here are the preliminary release notes for the patch:

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian Update Preliminary Release Notes

Feature​

• Pop groups are no longer divided by Ethics or Factions, instead each pop group will have a given percentage that belongs to each faction or ethic as appropriate. This means that:
  • THIS IS A BREAKING CHANGE AND WILL NOT PRESERVE SAVE GAME COMPATIBILITY.
  • Ethics and factions are now shown on the pop group entries in the planetary management UI, with tooltips showing the attraction to ethics and factions. Verbose tooltips are enabled by holding Alt, to show a breakdown of all modifiers for these attractions.
  • Pops shift ethics and factions more frequently
  • Pop group faction conversion happens more frequently
  • Ethic attraction now impacts faction growth
  • Simplify factions randomization logic
  • Updated Cyberization policies to account for the changes to pop groups and ethics. The Limited Cybernetic species trait has been removed, instead if the Limited Cyberization policy is in effect, Cybernetic Spiritualist pops do not benefit from Cybernetic Job Efficiency. The Limited Cyborg leader trait still functions as previously. This will also decrease the Approval penalty from regular spiritualist factions from the demand The Flesh is Strong.
• Unlocked Knights of the Toxic God for nomads
• Added policies to provide better control over the auto-designer for both players and AI:
  • Added a Fleet Doctrine policy with six doctrines that determine the tactical roles each ship class is designed to fill, affecting automated ship designs and ship-designer auto-complete.
  • Added Weapon Preference and Defense Preference policies that steer automated ship designs and technology research.
  • Added Starbase Weapon Preference and Starbase Defense Preference policies so station loadouts can diverge from the fleet.
• Federations can now enact laws to grant members free, automatic Commercial Pacts (and, with the Nomads DLC, Wayline Pacts) or Research Agreements. Each law is unavailable to the federation type that already grants the benefit through its perk (Trade League / Research Cooperative).
  • Trade League federations now provide free, automatic Commercial Pacts between all member empires.
  • Trade League federations now also provide free, automatic Wayline Pacts between all members. (Requires Nomads)
• Cosmogenesis is now available for Nomads
• Added a nomad compatible version of Storm Chasers
  • Storm Attraction is now fully functional for mobile arkships
• Empires now have more control over their colors:
  • Added a toggle and selectors in empire creation so you can select your map border and fill colours independently of your flag color.
  • Ship Color can now be selected independently from flag colors in Empire Creation.
  • Color swatches in the species creator's flag editor and ship-set selector now show the name of the selected color on hover.
• Flag emblems are now correctly centered within the Empire's Flag hexagon frame

Improvement​

• Regular Empires can now cancel accepted contracts after 20 years, with a notification sent to the operator.
• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" list will now always show a variety of systems with different resources, so if you have a dozen physics deposits, they won't hide all of your energy systems. All "best systems" finders now show up to 12 systems.
• Added new event options to the Forever Cruise situation stage events, allowing players to accept temporary economic penalties to affect the situation's direction.
• Starbase, Orbital Ring, and Waystation weapon modules are now weapon-type-specific (lasers, mass drivers, swarmer missiles, particle launchers, psionic torpedoes, scourge missiles, and several strike-craft hangars), each gated by the matching weapon technology and automatically upgrading to your latest tier.
• The Starbase Weapon Preference policy now includes Explosive and Strike Craft options, and automated station designs build the weapon modules matching the chosen preference.
• Nomad empires can now benefit from the Composer of Strands, Whisperers in the Void, and End of the Cycle Greatest Patron accords, with Arkship-appropriate rewards.
• Adaptive Evolution approach effect will be displayed as an active situation effect instead of just in the tooltip over the approach selection button.
• Overall pass to faction and ethic attractions, improving behaviors for small pop groups and concurrent factions
• Promoting or suppressing a faction has an impact on its attraction
• Factions with the same ethics can be promoted and suppressed separately
• When the Shroud consumes a world, the Zro deposit left behind scales with the population lost.

Balance​

• Strike craft and missile defensive modifiers now also affect strike craft and missiles launched from starbases and defense platforms.
• The Cybernetic species trait now provides an additional +5% Job Efficiency.
• Hive minds which encounter genetic defects during cyberization can now choose a cyberisation policy.
• Scientific Arkships now have +5% Deep Scanning Success Chance per Tier
• Your Trade Policy now converts the trade value gained from Commercial Pacts and Branch Offices, just like the rest of your trade value (previously this trade was not run through your policy).
• The "The Collective Self" technology now grants +1 Envoy.
• The "Federation Code" technology now reduces Diplomacy influence upkeep by 25%.
• Increased base knights upkeep by .15 alloys and .15 consumer goods
• Increased soldier alloy upkeep for arkship military zones by 0.1
• Rogue Servitor Forever Cruise Passengers now provide an additional +1% Complex Drone Job Efficiency on top of the base Gestalt bonus.
• Consecrate World changes:
  • Consecrate World can now be declared on a curated set of worlds tied to your empire's origin and traits (such as Gaia and relic worlds, and origin-specific worlds like toxic, shrouded, rift, or arc-furnace worlds).
  • Reworked the Consecrated Worlds reward — consecrating worlds now grants a deterministic, empire-wide bonus to Unity, Amenities, and Spiritualist Ethics Attraction that scales with the number of Consecrated Worlds (+10% / +20% / +40% at 1 / 2 / 3), replacing the previous randomized per-world outcome.
• The Paladin Ship now has a dedicated combat computer with Line tactics, giving it proper combat positioning while staying directable in combat, instead of ignoring attackers and holding position.
• The Stellar Cannon is now a Tier 3 tech, and requires Wormhole Stabilization and UV Lasers.
• The Cradle of Souls maximum-intensity aura surge has been reworked. It no longer builds defence platforms; instead every empire with systems in the aura gains Trust and a chance at a Favor, subjects gain Loyalty, Federation members gain Cohesion, and the patron's own colonies gain a crime or deviancy reducing "Cradle's Serenity". The passive starbase fire-rate bonus is removed.
• The Instrument and Cradle Chosen psionic leader traits now grant applicable bonuses to Gestalt and Nomad empires instead of slave-workforce, faction, and friendly-territory bonuses they could not use.
• All ships and cloned space fauna that have a mineral cost can no longer be built if your Operational Reserves are critical
• The Synthetic Awareness luminary trait now grants +15% Job Efficiency for Mechanical and Machine Pops instead of +25% Resources from Jobs.
• Each faction now gains attraction in empires holding the secondary ethic it is associated with
• Pops no longer favor their current faction when evaluating which faction to join
• Pops of another species can now join the Supremacists, at a reduced attraction
• A faction losing its potential members is now destroyed after a delay instead of immediately
• Progressive, Prosperity and Totalitarian attraction now depends on citizenship rights instead of the Pop's species
• The Dimensional Manipulator now grants a fixed number of 5 districts instead of a 33%
• Pop Growth from Hedonists now requires the Colony to have free Housing and Amenities, and is lost entirely while the empire has a Consumer Goods deficit.
• Hedonists now produce Unity and consume a small amount of Consumer Goods regardless of their Living Standard, where previously the Unity came only from Decadent Lifestyle.
• Pleasure Seekers empires now begin with a Civilian Industries building instead of Holo-Theatres.
• Offspring bio-ships now use the same Naval Capacity as the bio-ships they are grown from.
• The Calling of Arms now asks for a total Naval Capacity in line with current ship sizes, rather than a target reachable with a handful of Corvettes.
• Autocannons, Disruptors and other short-ranged weapons are no longer equippable on Starbases, Orbital Rings or Deep Space Citadels.
• Trade deposits now increase the resources gained from harvesting a planet.
• Deep Scanning is less likely to uncover Minor Artifacts if Minor Artifacts have already been found in the system. Shoutout to Composer of Strands for abusing this.
• Reduced the arkship harvesting and action modifiers provided by harvester jobs.
• Reduced the weapon damage each Ordnance Engineering weapon zone grants per soldier job from 5% to 1%.
• Cybernetic pops now gain 10% Job Efficiency, up from 5%. The Limited Cyberization penalty for hive drones doubles to match.
• The Cybernetic Luminary leader experience penalty is reduced from 25% to 10%.
• Pops ethics change is accelerated, by increasing a lot the frequency of change and marginally diminishing the size of the changes.
• Pops faction fill is much slower by default, the ethic attraction factor increased to give agency over that and allow for faster change
• Pops now leave a faction as soon as it becomes invalid or exceeds its eligible Pops, instead of waiting for the monthly update
• Biomorphosis now takes about half as long to complete, bringing it in line with the other ascension paths.
• Champions Forge Live will now spawn after the Galactic Community has been formed to ensure communications do not spread too quickly
• Biological ships are no longer affected by energy deficits.
• Biological ships are now affected by food deficits.

Bugfix​

• AI and auto-complete ship designs no longer leave weapon or strike craft slots empty after upgrades or power rebalancing.
• Fixed auto-generated ships occasionally receiving two sections in a single section slot.
• Role-based section selection always resolves a valid section, so screen and point-defense ships receive the correct section.
• Harbinger Crystalline Growth Regulators can no longer grow crystals on strike craft that have been launched, and modifiers that increase the armor and/or shields of strike craft no longer render strike craft functionally immune to damage.
• Missile and torpedo armor and shields are now correctly applied in combat, so point-defense no longer ignores them.
• Fixed Gospel of the Masses additional trade value not applying to your branch offices.
• The Branching Out modifier from the Cyberization situation now gives +10% Trader Job Efficiency.
• Automated starbase, waystation, and orbital ring designs now fit armor instead of shields in systems or on stations where shields are negated (pulsars, X-ray binaries, turbulent nebulae, and cloaking modules).
• Fixed Deep Scan uncovering anomalies and archaeology sites far less often than the intended 7% and 3% chances.
• Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan can now uncover resource deposits, anomalies, and archaeology sites instead of only pre-sapients.
• The success chance of Sero the Younger's Habitable Deep Scan now correctly diminishes with repeated scans of the same world.
• Deep Scan resource caches now correctly scale with the Advanced Xenostudies resolution instead of A Voice for All.
• Federation members can now form Commercial Pacts with one another, matching Research Agreements.
• Free and automatic Research Agreements between Federation members now correctly benefit from Research Sharing from Agreements modifiers and satisfy faction demands for having Research Agreements.
• Fixed federation members losing their existing Commercial Pacts with one another when forming or joining a federation. Members of non-trade federations now keep their pacts, while Trade Leagues replace them with the free federation pact (This only applies to Commercial Pacts between federation members).
• Fixed pop and country ethics being permanently and progressively wiped across the galaxy during play.
  • What makes a man turn neutral? A lust for gold? Power? Or an error in the pop ethics randomizer?
• Fixed Protostars not counting towards having energy deposits.
• Extended swapping logic for soldiers into knights. All sources of soldier jobs should now be covered
  • Knight swaps should now work properly for nomads
• The Joyous Warrior trait now specifies that its effect can only trigger with the relevant leader leading planetary invasions
• If a system's starbase is unoccupied while all its planets are occupied, the system is no longer considered fully occupied.
• Fixed the crime events (among others) not firing on arkships
• Cryo-Sleepers no longer produce Crime/Deviancy
• Clarified the Creativity Exhibition Vault's tooltip for Forever Cruise Rogue Servitors: its production and upkeep effects reach all passengers, not just first-class Bio-Trophies.
• Fixed the Machine Uprising resolution notification showing "Unidentified Empire" instead of the names of the empires involved when an uprising was quelled or won.
• Synthetic Fertility Nomads are no longer able to build arkships until they have researched droids
• Fixed edge cases where Cetana would not properly turn hostile upon war declaration
• Added a missing nomad Archaeology notification string
• Fixed the Ness treasure system not spawning for non nomad empires
• Fixed the Gaia world from Starlit Citadel being impossible to colonize
• Fixed a missing icon in the Order's Keep concept tooltip
• The Crystalline Bane modifier should now get properly removed
• Adjusted the number of ships produced when using the Prethoryn Queen relic
• Wilderness and Synthetic Fertility now start with homeworlds of the proper size
• Fixed a case of double notification after a machine uprising ends
• The Dyson Swarm "best systems" finder will now be based exclusively on raw star resources, and will be unaffected by modifiers like techs or cosmic storms.
• The Arc Furnace "best systems" finder will now only show systems that have a Molten World.
• Fixed numerous issues with Total Wars:
  • Nomadic Empires will now gain ownership of defeated Arkships and Waystations after Total War status quo victory.
  • Nomadic Empires will now steal a percentage of the population from planets they destroy during Total Wars.
  • Arkships defeated by Settled Empires are now destroyed after Total War status quo victory.
  • Nomadic Empires can now be defeated in Total Wars.
  • Taking planets in a Total War will now occupy them until the system is fully occupied, then annex them all at once. This prevents a bug where a system without a starbase didn't rebuild it if only some planets were taken.
• The leader tooltip is now shown in all places where it should be shown
• 'Delicious Titans' planet modifier tooltip now correctly says 'Farmers are Converted in Titan Hunters' and doesn't show a broken icon.
• savefiles with pending first contact event no longer fail to pick an event sound
• Graphical crashfix related to Storm Forecast
• Entertainer jobs on Forever Cruise Arkships now correctly come from the Entertainment Hub specialization instead of the Operations Center.
• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archives being destroyed when a Settled Empire's system is destroyed.
• Fix for Nomadic Grand Archive not being destroyed when a Waystation is lost or downgraded below Tier 2.
• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar
• Mandatory Pampering now reduces First Class Passenger Consumer Goods upkeep to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.
• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers
• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.
• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.
• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.
• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin
• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.
• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.
• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.
• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.
• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.
• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.
• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.
• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation
• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.
• Carrier-computer ships now position themselves using the longer of their weapon or strike craft range, so a carrier with no strike craft no longer charges into close range.
• Arkships without equipped weapons no longer charge into melee.
• Fixed fleets set to flee when overpowered evaluating their flee condition correctly on an Evasive stance, rather than always evading regardless of the threat.
• Fixed issue with district indicators in the planet view
• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow
• Fixed the Prospectorium's description incorrectly referring to the Scholarium.
• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined
• Federation voting laws now apply when joining and leaving ongoing wars
• Fixed manually issued system-wide Harvest orders queueing when there were no valid targets.
• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on surveying.
• Fixed the Declare War button tooltip being incorrect after leaving a federation.
• Fixed the Logistic Growth Scaling galaxy setting being truncated to one digit.
• Nomadic Purge Vassals are now a special subject type that provide resources to their Overlord through subject taxes. Any remaining pops and resources are handed up to the overlord when the subject finishes its work, instead of being lost when the subject's colony was abandoned. A Purging Complete notification lists the pops and resources handed over to the Overlord when a Purge Vassal finishes its work, including any incidental resources that the planet may have produced during their stay.
• Fixed Nomad Overlords not receiving the Unity (Fanatic Purifiers, Determined Exterminators, and Necrophages) or Society Research (Devouring Swarms) generated when their temporary purge subjects purged pops – the reward now goes to the Overlord instead of being lost with the subject.
• Nomad purge subjects of assimilating empires (such as Driven Assimilators) now assimilate the pops they can rather than purging them, only exterminating pops that cannot be assimilated. The assimilated pops are handed up to the Overlord when the subject disbands, instead of the subject exterminating everyone or lingering forever as a separate empire.
• Nomadic Purge Vassals no longer establish Embassies, and other empires can no longer propose Embassies to them.
• Empires now correctly lower their opinion of a Nomad Overlord when its Purge Vassal Necrophages pops of their species
• Fixed Necropurge not always creating pops.
• The Judicial Execution leader trait now correctly grants bonuses when purging Thermophiles
• Fixed the Necrophage Elevation Ceremony failing on Arkships. Elevated pops now adapt to Arkship Habitability, and the Pops Necrophaged notification is now shown, highlighting the Arkship fleet
• Nomadic empires attempting to invade the first pre-FTL encounter are now correctly told that they need to survey the planet, not that their pre-ftl interference policy is preventing them from invading the planet.
• Fixed a wide-ranging regression that caused many anomalies, events, and origin features to silently stop working – most visibly the classic Precursor dig sites no longer appearing when surveying, and the Fear of the Dark origin's hostile empire failing to spawn.
• Empires are no longer allowed to join ongoing wars against their subjects/overlords.
• Arkship weapon and reactor specializations now clearly indicate in their tooltip that they add Strategic Resource upkeep, with a link to the Strategic Resources concept explaining what that means.
• The game will no longer tell the player to kill their own Behemoth to get rid of the Elder Voidspawn.
• Fixed several minor artifact and anomaly research projects (including the Precursor "Delve into the Secrets" actions, Master's Writings, and numerous other special projects) granting no reward when completed as a Nomad empire.
• Fixed an issue where a Nomad waystation disabled by hostile space fauna during a raid could remain disabled after the fauna left the system.
• Fixed the "Gather Information" operation sometimes failing to deliver its intelligence report when the target empire no longer existed.
• Fixed a script error in the genetic mutation event that could occur for Spiritualist empires.
• The "Assault Armies" and "Shipyard" buttons on the Arkship Ship Controls tab are now properly localized in all languages
• Fixed the Drums of War event "The Claimant" displaying an incorrect species insult when referring to the rival claimant
• Synaptic Lathes with many pop groups on them no longer sometimes stop purging.
• Fixed Synaptic Lathes not purging pops. Existing saves with broken lathes will repair at some point over the course of a year.
• Nomads can now reactivate and own gateway megastructures
• Nomad AI empires now build contract-required Waystations even when over their Starbase Capacity, instead of leaving those contracts unfulfilled.
• Scan Debris Contracts now automatically cancel when the target debris decays before it can be scanned, instead of remaining active indefinitely.
• The Prosperous Unification origin now displays correct, Arkship-specific effects and flavor text for Nomadic empires, instead of planet-based districts and "Homeworld" terminology
• Wars declared with the Nomadic Raid, Plunder, or Wipe Them Out war goals now include the war type in their name, consistent with other war goals
• The Anomalous Cube archaeology site now refers to the correct empire (or if communications haven't been established yet, then to "this empire")
• Spell checked localization files
• Corrected an error that crept into the Seddom system in Chinese localization (Once again 复合子个体的演示)
• [Please visit the Paradox forums for the full Bugfix notes.]

AI​

• AI empires adopt a fleet doctrine and weapon/defense preferences matching their personality.
• Auto-generated ship designs are now fully regenerated when new technology is researched, allowing them to adopt newly unlocked weapons and switch weapon families.
• AI empires research weapon technologies matching their preferred weapon type more eagerly.
• AI empires research armor or shield technologies in line with their defensive preference.
• Sneak-attacker empires are more likely to research cloaking technology.
• The AI no longer selects battleship, ember, or Stinger XL sections before it has a usable XL weapon.
• The Stinger artillery section is no longer unconditionally preferred over its line section.
• AI empires now fit psionic shields when they can afford the zro, instead of always avoiding them.
• A shortage of one rare or strategic resource no longer blocks the AI from using weapons and components that rely on other rare resources.
• AI empires with stealth fleet doctrines now correctly install cloaking devices on auto-designed ships.
• Psionic shields are no longer equipped on stealth ships that lack psionic cloaking.
• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.
• Fixed AI not declaring war if their naval capacity is too high.
• AI empires will no longer fire the Stellar Cannon into the territory of empires they are at peace with (unless recently insulted), and will now prioritize static targets like upgraded starbases and defense platforms when at war.
• Fleet composition is now driven by the empire's active fleet doctrine and weapon preference, replacing the previous fixed personality- and civic-based ship ratios.
• Crisis and ascension hulls are now favored in fleet composition once unlocked.
• Nomad AI no longer builds a redundant Logistics Hub on nearly every Waystation. The build check now looks at the whole connected wayline network for remote collection instead of only directly neighboring systems, so the AI builds at most one hub per network and stops paying stacked upkeep for hubs that did nothing.
• The AI will no longer spam unspecialized districts. The first district of a type is never penalized, and it will consider all available district specializations in case they dramatically change the production of the district. This was most visible on Nomadic Arkships, where Habitation Districts cost Alloys but provided only Housing until specialized – but it spent all of its Alloys on Habitation Districts and could no longer afford the Specialization that would make it beneficial.
• Housing, amenity and crime needs no longer outweigh every production candidate for the AI.
• AI colonies now aim for a small Housing and Amenity surplus instead of trying to break exactly even.
• The AI will build pop growth buildings on a colony regardless of how much spare Housing it has, since automigration will move the pops somewhere useful.
• The AI will no longer hoard Unity if it can afford a new Tradition.
• Nomad AI now recognizes the strategic resources it gathers through harvesting. Previously it assumed it had no income of these resources and refused to build most military and advanced Arkship districts and buildings. It will now build them when its strategic resources stockpile can sustain the upkeep, and hold off when stockpiles run low.
• Improved Nomad AI Waystation placement. It now steers its network toward high value destinations such as inhabited worlds, resource rich systems and gateways, and favors extending long connected lines instead of scattering disconnected stubs. It also develops the Waystations it already owns before founding new low value ones, while still grabbing genuinely high value systems before rivals can.
• Nomad AI now builds new Arkships and upgrades them. Arkship construction was being starved of the single per week megastructure build slot by Waystation construction and now has its own slot. Tier upgrades were never triggered for mobile Arkships and now fire once the enabling technology is researched, spending the resources the AI budget already reserved for them.
• Nomad AI now develops secondary Arkship districts such as Reactor Arrays and Ordnance instead of building almost only Habitation Districts.
• Nomad AI no longer locks Influence and Alloys into the Arkship construction budget after it has built its full complement of Arkships, so the reservation releases at the cap instead of permanently starving the empire's Influence for decisions.
• Nomad AI now correctly saves for Arkship tier upgrades and the Exodus Jump module. These reservations never applied, which was preventing the AI from upgrading its Arkships even with a large Alloy surplus. It also no longer sets aside for the tier 2 and tier 3 upgrade at the same time, since it can only buy one of them. The Exodus Jump reservation is now made only when the empire has the technology and owns an Arkship with a free spinal mount slot, and is released once the module can no longer be built.
• Nomadic AI empires will no longer excavate Archaeological Sites in player owned space, even if you have a Research Agreement. (Note: If they were excavating a site before you claim the system, they will not abort the excavation. They were there first.) This does not prevent player Nomads with a Research Agreement or Archivism traditions from doing so.
• The AI will no longer upgrade and destroy Gene Clinics in a loop because that specific Gene Clinic is increasing stability and amenities to the point where they think they no longer need it.
• Automatically generated defense platform designs no longer use autocannons, disruptors, psionic disruptors or mining lasers. Unlike the corresponding change to starbases, these can still be manually equipped in the ship designer.
• Joining and Leaving War changes:
  • AI empires are considerably less willing to join ongoing wars. They now weigh the size of the war, whether they are already fighting other wars, whether they have any quarrel with the opposing war leader, and how they feel about the empire that is asking.
  • When deciding whether or not to join a war, an empire's opinion of each side is now averaged across that side rather than summed, so a war is no longer more tempting to join just because there are many empires in it.
  • Bribing a reluctant empire into a war costs substantially more, and each reason they would rather stay out raises the price further. Empires are more easily talked into defending than into attacking.
  • AI empires no longer offer to join wars they do not actually want to fight.
  • Coalitions against a galactic crisis are unaffected by the new reluctance, and still form as readily as before.
• [Please visit the Paradox forums for the full AI notes.]

UI/UX​

• Waystations now show the amount of resources collected every month.
• Improved Waystation stockpile tooltips.
• Overlapping list boxes are now properly centered
• Policies are now grouped into collapsible categories (Military, Diplomacy, Economy, Research, Society), with a traffic-light header on each category indicating whether all, some, or none of its policies can currently be changed.
  • Added a button to collapse or expand all policy categories at once.
  • Military policies can now be reviewed and changed from the Fleet Manager, and research policies from the Technology view.
• Hints nomad players that they can excavate owned dig sites if they have the Frontier Archaeology tradition
• Building slots are highlighted when they are selected
• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.
• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.
• Fixed the Open Orbital Ring button being hardcoded in planet_view.gui
• Notification Icons fix, general centralization
• Fixed Contract notification toasts (accepted, completed, abandoned, failed) showing a redundant empire name and a stray line break in their titles.
• [Please visit the Paradox forums for the full UI/UX notes.]

Performance​

• macOS builds can now run natively on Apple Silicon as a universal (arm64 + x86_64) binary, no longer requiring Rosetta 2 translation.
• Improved mid- and late-game performance by optimizing how pop faction attraction is calculated.
• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.
• Daily faction update now evaluates Pop Group pre-triggers, faction potential triggers and join rules once per update
• Reduced save game size by no longer storing designed empires that are not needed.
• Galactic Community resolutions are now cached rather than recollected during every country modifier update.
• Fixed bad performance in opinion map mode
• Completing a technology no longer rebuilds every ship design immediately. The rebuild is deferred to the next daily update, and AI empires' rebuilds are staggered so they no longer all land on the same tick.
• Automated fleets with nothing to do no longer search for a new order every tick. Retries are now spaced out by a cooldown and staggered between fleets.
• Faction attraction, eligible Pops and monthly Pop changes are now cached instead of being recomputed for every tooltip
• Ethics Pop changes are now cached per empire and per colony, and pop ethics country update is only done on the monthly tick

Stability​

• Fixed a crash that could occur when hovering over certain leader traits.
• Fixed a potential crash when generating empire name labels on the galaxy map.
• Fixed some more multiplayer out-of-sync issues.
• Fixed a crash when quitting the game on macOS.
• Fixes an OOS caused by different ordering of focus category tiers.
• Fixed a crash that could occur during galaxy generation.
• Fixed a crash when clicking the locked Nomad toggle in Empire Creation without the Nomads DLC.
• Fixes CTD when displaying the tooltip for a weapon component type
• Fix a tiebreak issue in pop group statistics, potentially causing desyncs
• Fixed a multiplayer desync that could occur after colonizing a planet with a colony designation selected in the colonization menu.

Audio​

• Portrait/Paragon remastering – consistent well-balanced volume, all stereo, consistent reverb, minor quality issues fixed.
• Events, Archaeology / Special Events, Advisors – Volume made consistent and well-balanced.
• Audio credits updated from First Contact through Nomads.
• Replaced 16 missing Machine Age portrait and Galactic Paragons voice files and corrected their volume.

Modding​

• Remove obsolete faction parameters
• Added missile armor, shield, and hull point modifiers (flat and percentage variants).
• Added triggers pop_ethic_amount, pop_ethic_percentage.
• Added effects pop_force_add_ethic, pop_force_remove_ethic, pop_force_transfer_ethic
• Fix `pop_force_add_ethic` and `pop_change_ethic` triggers
• Remove deprecated triggers `pop_has_ethic` and `pop_group_has_ethic`
• Added the can_spawn_random_anomaly, can_spawn_random_archaeological_site, and can_add_random_non_blocker_deposit triggers, and a surveyor parameter to the spawn_random_anomaly effect.
• Exposed defines for allowing the AI to ignore the penalties for being over naval cap or over naval cap. The current state of these defines is no change from previous behaviour.
• Added pretriggers to ships
• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).
• Removed min_navy_for_wars from country types.
• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.
• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.
• Added the weapon_and_strike_craft range_components option for ship behaviors.
• Expanded the ship_behavior template documentation (move patterns, combat_movement, flee_when_overpowered, allow_emergency_ftl, allow_disengage).
• Updated the documentation for the `create_country` effect.
• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource
• Added the transfer_resources_to_empire effect, which transfers a country's stockpile of each listed resource (optionally a percentage of it) to another country in a single call
• [Please visit the Paradox forums for the full Modding notes.]

I currently expect to release the 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Custodian update next week, on Tuesday, September 22.

What’s Next?​

As 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ releases next week, the next Stellaris dev diary will be two weeks from now on October 1st. See you then!