Pretty big free update today even if you don't buy the Distant Stars DLC for $10. I just jumped back in and the game has changed significantly over the course of the last two years, especially with the way FTL has been completely revamped. Anyway here are today's patch notes. Anyone else playing Stellaris, whether you are jumping back in or playing for the first time?
Story Pack Features
- Added many new Anomalies, increasing the total amount by almost 50%
- Added new Leviathan: Voidspawn
- Added new Leviathan: Tiyanki Matriarch
- Added new Leviathan: Scavenger Bot
- Curator Enclaves will now also spawn for Distant Stars owners, to help with the new Leviathans
- Added new unique systems to explore
- Added L-Gates and the mysterious L-Cluster outside the known galaxy, which you will have to investigate and research to access
Free Features
- Galaxy generation has been reworked for more interesting hyperlane terrain: stars are now grouped in highly connected 'constellations' separated by thin 'highways', making for more strategic placement of natural chokepoints
- All hyperlanes are no longer immediately visible when starting a new game, but will be revealed through exploration. Hyperlane visibility extends roughly twice as far as your sensor range
- Added binary star systems
- Added trinary star systems
- Added new star classes
- Anomaly levels have been reworked to span levels 1-10 instead of 1-5
- Anomalies can no longer fail, but instead the time to research an anomaly will depend on the difference between scientist level and anomaly level, with high level anomalies potentially taking a very long time to research for a low skill scientist
- Some older Anomalies have been reworked and fixed to function properly
- Strategic Resources have been reworked so that similar materials have the same types of effects - crystals for ship damage, ores for ship defenses, gas for empire effects, etc.
- All Strategic Resources are now always visible, but most require specific Technologies to be mined
- Strategic Resource deposits are no longer distributed according to galaxy clusters
- Added new Aldar Crystals Strategic Resource
- Added Aldar Crystals tech
- Added Experimental Subspace Nagivation which allows science ships to go missing-in-action and travel to a selected system. This will allow them to bypass (but not enter) closed borders
- Added a new Alert for when establishing communications reveals a new Strategic Resource within another Empire's borders
- Establishing communications with another Empire that has a Bypass (Gateway, Wormhole, L-Gate) within its borders now counts as discovering that Bypass Type
- Added a new Mammalian portrait
Balance
- Survey speed increase per Scientist level increased from 5% per level to 10% per level
- Most scientist level requirements for Special Projects have been removed, as they tend to be gated by anomalies anyway
- Decreased outer boundary distance for Fallen Empires (was preventing more Fallen Empires from spawning in large galaxies)
- Zro Distillation is now a Tier 3 tech (down from 4)
- Rebalanced Strategic Resource tech tiers to better fit their effects
UI
- Situation Log has been reworked and will now also list anomalies
- Science ships now have a "Research Anomalies in System" right-click command on systems
- Renamed tile science modifiers from e.g. "Physics Output" to "Tile Physics Output" to better reflect what the modifiers actually do
- Scientist level is now shown in the outliner
AI
- AI will retreat its Colossus if it is alone in combat, as even a planet destroying giant laser is cold comfort in the lonely depths of space
- Fixed an issue where the AI would incorrectly allocate too much budget to navies when it could not support any more ships, resulting in underdeveloped empires
Modding & Bugfixes
(a lot, check the link)
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