Hi all, Jamor here.

I'm filling in for Wiz this week, as I want my Game Director to

focus on post-launch support for Cherryh, our biggest update yet.

Today's dev diary is about 2.0.2_beta: the new build available as an optional beta
for Steam users right now (note for Paradoxplaza Launcher users: we're using Steam
as our beta testing platform at this time, if you want to try it out please use the
Steam key that came with your Plaza purchase).

When we made 2.0, we knew that the scale of changes would be huge, and therefore I
budgeted a larger than normal amount of dev time for post-launch support. The
objective is to absorb and process player feedback, and perform bug fixes as well
as balance tweaks and general improvements. There are almost as many unique play
styles as there are Stellaris players out there, and our objective is to hit a good
balance point for the maximum number, which you can then further tweak to your own
preferences with the new game customization options.

2.0.2 is planned to be a "rolling beta", meaning we will continue to update it at

intervals when we have new tweaks/fixes that we want to push to you. Your feedback
on it will be crucial for determining the content of the final, official version,
so please continue to play and tell us how it goes.

We especially want to make sure we get War Exhaustion/Status Quo Peace right, so
that it produces believable and satisfying war results for the greatest number of
people. As such, the initial changes in this patch are experimental and we'll
continue to iterate on them throughout the test period. Please don't hesitate to
give us your constructive feedback.

Spoiler: Click to view patchnotes

#################################################################
######################### VERSION 2.0.2 ###########################
#################################################################

###################
# Feature
###################
* You are no longer forced to make peace at 100% war exhaustion, instead your
Influence and Unity monthly gains are reduced to 0 and a happiness penalty is
applied to all Pops until you make peace
* Occupation no longer contributes to War Exhaustion, but instead is displayed as a
separate factor in war overview, to make it clearer what you need to do in order to
enforce demands
* War Overview no longer attempts to calculate a winner in battles, but simply
displays war exhaustion gained by each side
* Marauder raiding fleets are now neutral to everyone except their intended target
so they won't wreck everything in their path when they go a-viking
* Fixed Gestalt Consciousness empires using Trading Hub starbase module and
Offworld Trading Company starbase building, they now use Resource Reprocessor and
External Acquisitions Area (name/flavor difference only)
* It is now possible to test-fire a World Cracker on habitable (but uninhabited)
planets in your space
* Added tier 5 Dark Matter thrusters that can only be gained by scavenging Fallen
Empire ships
* Transcendent Learning ascension perk has been added to the game, and it increases
leader level cap and empire leader cap
* Megastructure resources are now affected by country modifiers
* Ship sizes now have a default combat behavior and will prefer computers of that
type if auto-generated (Picket for Destroyers, etc)
* Added some more logic for making sure ship auto-complete doesn't switch your
desired combat role
* Space stations now use the country_mult modifier instead of the tile_mult
modifier and no longer get the tile_add modifier
* When a new ruler is elected, the previous ruler that was voted out of office (if
alive) will now attempt to take over the job that was opened up by the newly
elected ruler, assuming the leader class matches. Back to the mines, Mr. Ex-
President.

###################
# Balance
###################
* Reduced War Exhaustion per ship and army killed
* Militarist ethics now gain -10%/-20% war exhaustion gain instead of army damage
bonus
* Technologies that reduce claim cost now also decrease war exhaustion gain
* You now get war exhaustion a bit slower while fighting a Liberation War
* Increased energy upkeep of all Starbase sizes by +1. Outposts now cost 1 energy
maintenance
* Base unity income increased from 1 to 2
* Base tradition cost increased from 56 to 100 (does not affect the cost increase
from number of traditions)
* Tradition unity cost per system reduced from 2% to 1%
* Corvette/Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship build speed techs now also reduce build
cost of that ship type by 5%
* Habitats now have their own fortress building (Security Zone) that is effective
at unrest reduction but provides only a few defense armies and no FTL inhibitor or
bombardment protection
* It is now possible to mod away serviles & pre-sapient traits if you have
completed biological ascension
* Egalitarian ethics effect on faction influence increased from +15%/30% to
+25%/50%
* Corvette Focus trait now requires Destroyers tech (as it's hardly a 'focus' if
it's the only ship type possible)
* Scout admiral trait reduced from 20% to 10% speed (so Gale-Speed is faster)
* Admiral now always dies when last ship in fleet is destroyed and there are no
disengaged ships to move to
* Drone Mining Lasers are now a bit worse against hull and a bit better against
shields
* Broken and shattered planets spawned on galaxy generation can now have deposits
* Thrusters now cost different amounts of minerals and give different amounts of
evasion based on which ship size they are for (corvette thrusters are cheaper and
add more evasion, etc)
* Reduced cost of hiring Marauder leaders to 2000 energy
* Having an enclave in your border now gives +1 opinion per year instead of +1
opinion per month, as the latter made all other opinion boosts rather meaningless
* Increased opinion bonuses for ally of ally and mutual rivals
* Increased opinion penalties of allying rivals
* Tributary wargoal is now a bit easier to enforce
* Combat computers now give evasion_mult instead of evasion_add
* Asteroid Sighted can no longer pop after the first 50 years, to avoid it
happening in large sprawling empires with limited time to respond
* First pirate event now tells you the system where they are based
* Increased time limits of all Special Projects requiring a ship in orbit (new
minimum is 3 years)
* Federation fleet is now limited to an absolute max naval capacity of 500
* It is now possible to get the gateway activation tech if you know any other
empire that has the technology
* When a Federation enforces ideology on an empire, that empire now gets opinion
boosts with the entire federation
# Civics
* Citizen Service civic now also increases unity output from fortress and
strongholds by 1
* Aristocratic Elite civic now gives +2 leader cap and +2 governor max level
instead of +4 leader cap and -50% leader recruitment cost
* Distinguished Admiralty civic increases leader cap by +2
* Driven Assimilators now have the 'Assimilate' total war CB
* Purifier and anti-Purifier CBs no longer require neighboring status (was
confusing and unintuitive to players)
* Nationalistic Zeal civic now gives -10% war exhaustion gain instead of +1
rivalries
* Free Haven now gives xeno migration attraction instead of migration attraction

# Traditions
* Expansion adoption effect now gives +50% colony development speed (down from
+100%)
* Galactic Ambition expansion tradition now gives -20% starbase upkeep instead of
+2 starbase capacity

# Ascension Perks
* Shared Destiny effect on integration cost reduction changed from -50% to -75%
* Nihilistic Acquisition can now be taken by purifier-style empires

# Edicts
* Drone Campaign food cost increased from 100 to 500
* Learning Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* War Drone Campaign food cost increased from 50 to 500
* Patrol Drones planetary edict is now available to all Gestalt Consciousness-
empires

###################
# UI
###################
* Added building descriptions to traditions that unlock buildings
* Starbase upgrade cost and Module/Building building cost now properly show
modifiers affecting them
* Renamed Growth Speed to Pop Growth Speed to be clearer
* Added the correct icons for megastructures and starbases in the control-groups UI
* Contacts view has been improved
* Government view now displays ruler & heir skill stars
* Heir tooltip no longer displays skill effects (as heir has no skill effects until
they become ruler)
* Clicking your ruler or heir name in Government View will now allow you to change
their name and/or title
* Galaxy resources now show the amount actually collected, and the tooltips give
you the list of applied modifiers
* Resource modifier no longer show decimal values
* Removed pointless decimals for starbase caps, planet caps, naval command cap, and
naval capacity
* Added the country resources add and multipliers modifiers to the budget tab
* Improved how the speed modifiers are shown in the starbase upgrade time tooltip
* Added a more clear warning that deleting templates will also disband ships
* Fixed several instances of a Status Quo peace being called a White Peace in peace
messages
* Alert for High War Exhaustion is now more helpful
* Traits that are already present in species can now always be re-added while in
process of modifying template
* Aura tooltip now differentiates between system-wide friendly auras and fleet-only
friendly auras
* Changed the current value of template designs in fleet manager to show the
current amount of ships including ones that only are scheduled for retrofit

###################
# AI
###################
* AI now activates some of its anti-crisis logic when under threat from a mid-game
crisis like the Great Khan
* AI no longer picks shared destiny unless it has at least one vassal
* Added separate definitions for mid-game and end-game crisis factions, with
slightly different AI logic to respond to them
* Fixed another cause of AI endlessly inviting player to the same war

###################
# Modding
###################
* Added a country modifier for war exhaustion gain (when multiple countries are
involved on the same side in a war, the averaged modifier of all of them is used)
* add_threat effect now once again takes country scope (generates threat scaled
towards whole target empire)

###################
# Bugfix
###################
* Fixed system/colony tradition costs being multiplied on each other instead of
additive
* Fixed additional potential out of sync issues in multiplayer
* Afterburners can no longer be installed on defense platforms, as lovely as it was
to uselessly vent fuel in to space as a gesture of contempt to environmentalists
* Deep Space Black Site now requires you to own a planet in the system, instead of
erroneously using the same trigger as trading hub
* All Satrapies are now properly liberated when the Horde fractures into the
Diadochi
* Fixed bug where the planet class transition effect started too late
* Fixed adopting the Domination tradition tree not unlocking certain diplomatic
actions for eligible Machine Empires
* Fixed auto-exploring science ships doubling up (exploring the same system
simultaneously)
* Fixed a CTD. Could sometimes try to merge invalid fleets.
* No longer possible to hold Casus Belli on non-empire factions such as Crises and
Marauders
* Galactic core visibility is now lifted when you explore all systems adjacent to
it, instead of just one
* Fixed empires not being able to see primitives in other empires' space due to
lack of comms spread
* Ships merging in to fleets directly from stations now behave properly
* Fixed scientists not dying when their science ship was destroyed in battle
* Fixed raiding stance not having bombardment graphics on planet being raided
* Fixed tooltips for status column in contacts view to reflect accurately what they
represent
* Fixed raiding not always abducting pops when it should, due to bad habitability
calculation
* Fixed raiding stance not having the correct pop limit (would abduct at >6 instead
of >4 pops)
* Fix a freeze when trying to upgrade technologies more than their max levels
* Fixed Determined Exterminators starting with a farm building
* Construction is now paused for starbases in combat
* Fixed force ethics not correctly calculating a government for the defeated
empire's new ethics
* Enigmatic fortress now properly disables even after saving and loading the game
(status was not properly saved)
* Iron Fist governor trait is no longer available for Hive Minds, making it
disabled for all types of Gestalt Consciousness-empires
* Fixed being unable to land armies on a colony seized by Mutants
* Fix bug where queued items wasn't moved to the new fleet design when a design
upgrade becomes available
* Fixed Slaving Despots being far too common an AI personality because of wrongly
scripted weights
* Disables the bypass cache when calculating the distance to capital modifier,
hopefully solving an OOS issue
* Fixed a crash when quitting to the main menu in the middle of a war
* It should no longer be possible to try to spawn a star system with an invalid
star class
* Fix crash when comparing the relative power of a country that has no power
* Prevented fake country from trying to initialize a technology module it does not
have for some reason
* UNE now uses correct name list when spawned in Commonwealth games
* Fixed revolting slaves greedily snatching the capital planet when they're not
supposed to
* No longer possible to force ideology on Fallen Empires
* Fixed Omega Theory tech sometimes not appearing at the end of the Horizon Signal
chain
* Fixed an event-spawned science ship not getting a hyperdrive
* Fixed planet unrest modifiers not being properly recalculated
* Fixed Ascension Theory tech not being available to players who do not own
Apocalypse

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN OPT-IN PATCH. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE TO JOIN IN ORDER TO TEST
THE NEW VERSION.

Here's how to opt in:

Right click on Stellaris in your Steam library -> select Properties -> go to the
Betas tab -> select "2.0.2_beta"

I'll of course ping this thread and let you know when an updated version of the
beta goes out. Thank you all for your support, we think it's really great that we
get to work with our fan community to constantly improve the game together.

Make sure to check out next week's Dev Diary for a first look at our development
priorities going forward in the...wait for it...POST-APOCALYPSE.

(I've been waiting so long to say that)

Have fun everyone!