Stellaris Dev Diary #431 - 4.5 'Cygnus' Development Continues to Continue

by Alfray Stryke

Hey folks, I’m taking over for Eladrin this week since he’s swamped with meetings and I got voluntold for Dev Diary Duty.

The final 4.5 build isn't ready to ship, but we did push an Open Beta update earlier today, here’s the changelogs for that.

Stellaris 4.5 ‘Cygnus’ Open Beta Update 8 Preliminary Release Notes

Balance​

• 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

Bugfix​

• The minimum value for the max number of holding buildings is now always 0 (i.e. the minimum is no longer affected by the base define or certain modifiers).

• Different modifiers for the max buildings in a branch office are now summed together before being truncated, not after.

• POP_ETHOS_MIN_ATTRACTION is now ignored when no ethic ever reaches it, instead of suppressing the ethics shift entirely

• Driven Assimilator purge vassals no longer get stuck on conquered worlds that contain robotic pops. Those pops are now taken in as machines and handed to the Overlord along with the assimilated ones.

• The "Grotesque Rock Formation" special project is now anchored to the planet the anomaly was found on, instead of following the science ship around the galaxy.

• Planets colonized by the Contingency or the Prethoryn Scourge now show a complete set of districts, instead of missing their housing districts entirely.

• Synthetically ascended founder species can now be released as sector vassals, provided the empire has ascended synthetically or researched Synthetic Leaders.

• C.A.R.E's world can now be bombarded from orbit once its defensive protocols have turned hostile.

• The Claimant event in the Heirs of the Khan origin now correctly names the rival candidate's species.

• Fixed missing species names in several Grand Archive specimen descriptions and in the Grand Archive early-stage testing event.

• Contingency worlds now detonate their failsafes if they somehow come under the control of another empire, so the Contingency can no longer be left in a state where it cannot be defeated.

• Protostars can now yield physics and engineering deposits from Deep Scanning and The Surveyor relic.

• While playing with both the Red Giant origin and Eager Explorers civic, orbital stations can be built on the star as intended.

• The Mardak Vol and Vol species names, the Mardak Purger ship names, and the Crystalline Empire ruler title no longer always appear in English.

• Fixed Action Action Speed modifiers from jobs not applying

• Fixed Starlit Citadel origin failing to spawn its initial Deep Space Citadel.

• While using the ship designer on biological ships, the designer window no longer blocks the player from interacting with the edit section buttons.

• Fixed some branch office max building modifiers being applied to both the country's colonies and its branch offices.

• Tooltip of the Genomic Services Outreach correctly displays the replicators effect.

• Opening the holdings buildings tab on a biologic species planet no longer causes the game to freeze

• Situation Log entries for contracts, archaeological sites, astral rifts, first contacts and anomalies no longer go stale when one is replaced by a new entry of the same kind.

• Ship aura effects are now recalculated when an aura-carrying ship is destroyed and replaced, instead of continuing to apply the destroyed ship's auras.

• Several interface lists could keep showing outdated entries after what they listed was replaced. This affected the diplomacy vote and favors screens, envoy selection, the planet population and jobs views, resettlement, the species list, megastructure design selection, fleet home base selection, orbital lists and agreement terms.

• Fixed map ping staying visible after right-clicking an event notification.

• In coop, dismissing an event window now also removes the corresponding notification.

• Fixed Change Federation Type window not updating the federation level text automatically.

• Fixed ethics randomization failing for multiple reasons, maybe because of pre-FTL special behaviors

• Factions without supporters are no longer hidden from the outliner and the factions tab

• The faction approval icon now matches its modifier icon, and faction support no longer reuses the attraction icon

• The Arc Furnace Smelting tab now acts on the furnace on screen instead of the first one opened, so its highlighted mode, tooltip prices and retooling all apply to the right furnace.

• Event popups are no longer suppressed while the research window is open.

• Forced empires are once again displayed correctly in the New Game galaxy setup.

• Nomad empires are no longer missing the excavation option in the Infernals event chain.

• Added missing localization for several bypass types.

• Leaders who are missing in action, including a missing ruler, can no longer stand for election.

• Special projects with triggered requirements now show their icon on the galaxy map again.

• Megastructure build speed modifiers no longer apply twice to construction ships.

• Added the missing Behemoth ship size icon, including its damaged variant.

AI​

• AI economic plans no longer consider themselves complete based on scaling-only resource targets that were never actually counted, which could leave an empire stalled on an early economic tier indefinitely.

• AI empires are less likely to leave Urban Expansion districts on Urban World colonies and now prefer specializing them into Commercial Nexus instead.

• AI empires no longer construct the Institute, Supercomputer, or advanced production center buildings on colonies without a matching research or industrial district.

• AI should no longer build superfluous colony ships

UI/UX​

• Fixed layout issues in the Form Federation and Change Federation Type windows.

• Factions now display their average attraction and its breakdown in their size tooltip

• Faction and ethic entries now show their monthly supporter change, with a per colony breakdown

• Reworked the empire ethics header and tooltips to match the faction ones

• New icons for faction approval, support, supporters and attraction, and new ethics modifier icons

• Improved hitboxes for the factions tab entries

• Downgrading a starbase now asks for confirmation first.

Performance​

• 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

Modding​

• Removed the unused ai_update_type technology parameter.

• The holding max building modifiers are now called branch_office_target_max_buildings_add, branch_office_owner_max_buildings_add, subject_holding_target_max_buildings_add and subject_holding_owner_max_buildings_add.

• Removed unused modifiers planet_max_buildings_add and planet_non_artificial_max_buildings_add.

• Added the pop_attraction_tag parameter to pop faction types, listing the factors behind a faction's attraction in its tooltip

• Every faction type now declares its attraction tags

• Faction icons moved to gfx/interface/icons/factions/, with the per faction type icons under factions/types/

When a bug is more than a bug​

Sometime last month, I started investigating a few player complaints and bugs involving leaders, things like:

• “Sometimes my empire spawns with leaders of the wrong ethics”

• “My super-gene-modded Overtuned species perfect for leadership doesn’t generate leaders”

I thought these would be simple fixes and be within scope for 4.5.

I was wrong.

What follows is an insight in how our beloved game spirals into complexity and tech debt.

I started out thinking that our leader generation code should be fairly logical and checking for the right species and ethics is likely some calculation or other going wrong.

How Leaders Were Generated: In 4.5 (and earlier) the following occurred:

• The leader pool refreshed, causing the leader generation code to generate a fresh batch of leaders. Then for each leader:

• A job was selected using a weighted random list.

• A random pop group that worked that job was picked.

• The colony that the pop group belonged to was picked.

• A species was selected. (What do you mean we should consider the species working that job??)

• An ethic the pop group held was picked.

• We have now generated a leader with a species, home world, background job, and ethic.

• So we could have a Blorg leader, from Earth while no Blorg lived on Earth, provided a Blorg pop group existed in the UNE.

So that explains a few things.

How Leaders Will Be Generated: Planned for 4.6, is the following:

• The leader pool refreshes, causing the leader generation code to generate a fresh batch of leaders. Then for each leader:

• We build a list of every species in the empire that qualifies as a leader (there are slightly different rules for Officials & Scientists vs Commanders).

• Each species is weighted by the sum total of the size of all pop groups of that species in the empire.

• A species is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.

• We build a list of every pop group in the empire of the selected species in the empire.

• Each pop group is weighted by the size of the pop group multiplied by the weight of their stratum (10 for Elite, 5 for Specialist, 1 for Worker).

• A pop group is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.

• We grab the colony and stratum from the pop group with a simple look up.

• For ethic, we randomly select an ethic the pop group holds, weighted by how many pops in the group hold the ethic.

• For your empire’s initial ruler, if the empire has a fanatic or absolute ethic, we force their ethic to be the regular version of that ethic.

• For leaders in gestalt empires, we skip the ethic assignment.

• We build a list of every job worked by the pop group

• Each job is weighted by the number of pops working that job multiplied by the job weights (Base of 1 for every job in the game).

• A job is randomly selected from the list, using the weights to bias the result.

• We have now generated a leader with a species, home world, background stratum, background job, and ethic. All of these values are consistent with what actually exists in your empire.

Well I fixed the bug, but this can be better. Some issues I found along the way:

• Stratum and job weights are poorly defined.

• Background jobs had issues with job swaps.

• Species traits that improve leaders don’t influence leader generation.

So once more into the code mines

• Firstly, a leader’s background job will now be frozen at generation after looking up which job swap is valid. So a leader generated from a research world could have their background job displayed as a “Astral Researcher” not “Physicist”.

• Next up, I did a complete inventory of ethics. For each ethic, if the empire holds that ethic (or the fanatic or absolute version of that ethic) they increase the weight for the relevant strata or jobs to be selected during leader generation.

• Authoritarian Ethics

• Elite Stratum Weight: +40

• Enforcer, Noble, Planetary Warden, Noble Scientist, Sacred Noble, Patrician Job Weights: +25

• Egalitarian Ethics

• Specialist Stratum Weight: +10

• Worker Stratum Weight: +14

• Educator, Psionic Mentor Job Weights: +25

• Xenophobe Ethics

• Enforcer, Warden Job Weights: +25

• Xenophile Ethics

• Zookeeper, Merchant, Executive, Manager, Steward, Numistic Priest, Corpse Broker, Extinction Manager, Trader, Subterranean Liaison Job Weights: +25

• Militarist Ethics

• Lord Commander, Duelist, Knight, Soldier, Storm Duelist, Historic Reenactor, Necromancer, Beastfighter, Trophy Hunter, Hyper-Gladiator Job Weights: +25

• Pacifist Ethics

• Medical Worker, Unification Officer, Artisan, Museum Curator, Storm Dancer, Educator, Psionic Mentor, Wrangler, Rancher, Animal Handler Job Weights: +25

• Spiritualist Ethics

• High Priest, Telepath, Necrophyte, Prosperity Preacher, Mortal Initiate, Haruspex, Technophant, Priest, Death Chronicler, Death Priest, Extinction Manager, Cremator, Corpse Reader, Corpse Broker, Fire Seer, Fire Dancer, Numistic Priest, Spirit Medium, Devoted Adept, Fire Oracle, Blazewright, Radiant Priest, Pyrocrat, Ashbroker, Pyromancer, Blazing Harbinger, Sacred Noble, High Astrologist, Fortune Broker, High Pilgrim, Fortune Teller Job Weights: +25

• Materialist Ethics

• Science Director, Physicist, Biologist, Engineer, Chemist, Translucer, Gas Refiner, Roboticist, Metallurgist, Catalytic Technician, Artificer, Reassigner, Noble Scientist, Augmentation Merchant, Tech Visionary, Astrometeorologist, Astral Researcher, Space-Time Anomaly Researcher, Dimensional Portal Researcher, Astral-Meteorologist, Vent Researcher, Archaeo-Engineer, Dismantler, Munitions Decommissioner, Nanotech Researcher, Ranger, Zookeeper, Genomic Researcher Job Weights: +25

• Following that, the same but for leader classes:

• Official

• High Priest, Politician, Noble, Merchant, Executive, Colonist, Culture Worker, Bureaucrat, Unification Officer, Manager, Entertainer, Artisan, Reassigner, Clerk, Prosperity Preacher, Death Chronicler, Educator, Pearl Diver, Haruspex, Technophant, Necrophyte, Mortal Initiate, Priest, Steward, Numistic Priest, Death Priest, Fire Dancer, Fire Seer, Pyromancer, Cremator, Extinction Manager, Spirit Medium, Fortune Teller, Corpse Reader, Corpse Broker, Devoted Adept, Trader, Subterranean Liaison Job Weights: +100

• Scientist

• Science Director, Noble, Colonist, Zookeeper, Telepath, Chemist, Translucer, Gas Refiner, Roboticist, Medical Worker, Metallurgist, Catalytic Technician, Artificer, Technician, Physicist, Biologist, Engineer, Astrometeorologist, Astral Researcher, Space-Time Anomaly Researcher, Dimensional Portal Researcher, Astral-Meteorologist, Vent Researcher, Archaeo-Engineer, Dismantler, Munitions Decommissioner, Nanotech Researcher, Ranger, Genomic Researcher, Wrangler, Rancher, Animal Handler Job Weights: +100

• Commander

• Noble, Lord Commander, Duelist, Knight, Soldier, Enforcer, Storm Duelist, Squire, Necromancer, Beastfighter, Trophy Hunter, Hyper-Gladiator Job Weights: +100

• Due to how these weights are constructed, the leader class will have far more sway in the background job of a leader than the empire ethic.

Well having all this data about leaders is great, but the leader tooltip is awful, let’s do something about that.

Current leader tooltips from a CoM game (my Commonwealth has necromancers for reasons)

Leader tooltips from the same edited CoM after throwing away most of the leader tooltip and reworking it

Since this investigation kept growing and I had the time available, I figured “Well why not do something about those species traits?”. After an inventory of valid species traits, I decided to add a new “Recruitable Leaders from Species” modifier, which acts as a multiplier on the chance for a species to be selected when the leader generation code runs. Thus if a species has Recruitable Leaders from Species: +50% and a total empire population of 10,000, they’ll count for the purposes of selection odds as a population size of 15,000.

Recruitable Leaders

Species Traits

+25%

Cybernetic, Erudite, Psionic, Virtual Machine and Mechanical (if the Synthetic Leader trait would be granted)

+20%

Augmentations of the Choir, Augmentations of the Commune, Augmentations of the Fellowship, Augmentations of the Templars, Gene Mentorship, Learning Algorithms (Cybernetic), Ritualistic Implants

+15%

Enhanced Memory, Inquisitive Axioms, Neuro-Savant, Spatial Mastery, Talented, Uncanny Intuition

+10%

Clone Soldier Ascendant, Clone Soldier Descendant, Eternal Machine, Learning Algorithms (Machine), Quick Learners, Uplifted

+5%

Clone Soldier, Elevated Synapses

-10%

Repurposed Hardware, Slow Learners

-15%

Forcefully Devolved, Jinxed

-20%

Conservative, Limited Memory, Neural Limiters

Finally, I figured that since I’m fixing up issues with leaders, why not add some additional modding support.

Draft Changelogs for this “Bugfix”

Balance​

• A Philosopher King may now be assigned to govern their empire capital.

• Species traits now influence which species produces leaders. Traits that improve leaders make that species more likely, and traits that impair them make it less likely.

• Ethics have been reworked to prefer leader backgrounds that suit them. Authoritarian empires favor the ruling class, Egalitarian empires favor workers and specialists, and every ethic now has a preference.

Bugfix​

• A leader's background species now matches the population of their home colony. Previously a leader could be one species while their recorded home colony held only another.

• Starting leaders no longer hold an ethic their empire does not have. A Spiritualist empire will not produce a Materialist ruler.

• The starting ruler of an empire with a fanatic or absolute ethic now always holds the regular form of that ethic.

• Leader background jobs can now correctly draw upon job swaps.

UI​

• Leader tooltips have been restructured and now include alt-verbose mode style tooltips

• A leader's Background is now behind ALT along with the per skill level effects, which shortens an idle leader's tooltip considerably.

• A ruler's bonus skill from their authority or civics now appears in their skill breakdown whether or not they sit on the council.

Modding​

• Added species trait modifier leader_species_weight_mult

• Added leader_background_stratum_weight to ethics, civics and leader classes

• Fanatic and absolute ethics now inherit the leader background weights of their regular form.

• Replaced the define LEADER_JOB_BACKGROUND_STRATA_WEIGHTS with leader_background_weight listed in the pop category definitions

• Added leader class parameter valid_for_leader_pool

• Added country_pool_size_add and country_external_pool_size_add modifiers

• *_starting_age_add and *_starting_age_mult modifiers are now correctly generated

• Updated documentation for ethics, civics and leader classes. Each database now documents every field once, in a 00_README.txt beside its data.

• Added game rules, one per leader post, that lift the block on assigning an empire's ruler to that post.

• Added a heir_skill_add country modifier, mirroring ruler_skill_add.

You should be pleased to know that my explorations this week into reported issues on strike craft and fleet combat behaviour are yielding similar results.

What’s Next?​

If all goes according to plan, next week Eladrin will be sharing information about the release date for the 4.5 'Cygnus' update.