Developer Paradox has detailed Stellaris patch 3.7.4, which is out now and makes some welcome changes and improvements to the space grand strategy game following the arrival of the Stellaris First Contact DLC earlier this month. Among the changes are some big tweaks to one of the origins added with the DLC, payback, and a chance for civilizations to have close calls when nuclear war threatens to break out.
The payback origin is one of three introduced with the expansion, and sees you starting out on a planet that has managed to hold off the invasion efforts of a hostile empire – albeit one that’s still out there waiting for you. The new update alters several aspects of this origin to adjust the behaviour of the Debt Collectors and the MSI, and should make the origin play out a little more smoothly. The MSI also get additional naval capacity and some new starting tech, making them a little stronger overall.
There’s now a chance that pre-FTl civilizations can run into a ‘close call’ when the threat of nuclear war breaking out is imminent. Starbase reactors get a nice 15% buff to their power, which should help upgraded citadels make use of more of their weapon slots. Meanwhile, Hive-Minds that have both Stargazers and Cordyceptic Drones now begin with three reanimated amoebae.
There’s also a pretty hefty range of bug fixes, such as ones causing the ‘Sabotage Starbase’ option to not actually destroy components and the Solarpunk society remaining neutral after being attacked. There will no longer be happiness penalties applied based on unemployment from living standards, which will now be determined by job strata. The AI will also now correctly create clone vats to keep its colonies alive if it’s in control of a clone army, which is probably for the best.
Stellaris update 3.7.4 patch notes
Here are the patch notes for the Stellaris 3.7.4 update, which is out now:
Payback Origin Changes
- If you defeat the Debt Collectors three times, the MSI will use the Humiliate war goal against you instead of trying to vassalize you.
- The Debt collectors won’t bug you anymore if you’re currently at war with the MSI.
- Fixed Payback war goals to ensure you can’t vassalize or impose ideology on homicidal empires.
- Slightly increased surrender acceptance of Payback war goals.
- Fixed a rare instance where the Debt Collectors event chain could get soft locked if the debt collectors were defeated by another empire.
- Payback empires now get a consolatory prize if the MSI gets destroyed by a Marauder empire.
- Fixed an issue where a Payback empire using the End Threat (Payback) war goal against the MSI could end with a whimper instead of as intended.
Balance and Improvements
- Pre-FTL civilizations now have a chance of having a “close call” when nuclear war threatens to break out.
- Increased starbase reactor power by roughly 15%.
- Hive-Minds with both Cordyceptic Drones and Stargazers now start with 3 reanimated amoebae.
- Pre-FTL Awareness cannot naturally decay below 10.
- The Raise Awareness espionage operation now prevents pre-ftl Awareness from naturally decaying for 5 years.
- The Triumviri ending for Fear of the Dark is now achievable from infiltrating the Fevorian government.
- Buffed MSI by giving them some bonus naval capacity and starting technologies.
Bug Fixes
- The devolving beam now properly destroys the final contingency world (when boosted with the Archaeo-Engineers Ascension Perk).
- Fixed Sabotage Starbase operation failing to destroy starbase components.
- Fixing a case where you were blocked from building orbital rings on a Fear of the Dark planet.
- It is no longer possible to acquire multiple Galatrons from reliquaries.
- Hivemind pre-FTLs will no longer be producing consumer goods.
- Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society wouldn’t reattach itself to the galaxy.
- Fixed an issue where the Solarpunk society would stay neutral after being attacked.
- Fixed an issue where Sol X and your Beta homeworld would overlap.
- Fixed the Dark Forest achievement not triggering in some cases due to interactions with marauders.
- Construction ship and science ships gained from picking a specialization as part of the Imperial Fiefdom origin now correctly start with hyper drives for empires with the Eager Explorer civics.
- Fix AI Empires building hundreds of observation stations if you don’t own First Contact.
- Empire naming adjectives should now be seen for German, Simplified Chinese, and Russian.
- Removing an unnecessary progress bar in the clear blocker view.
- Removed happiness penalties from unemployment from living standards, these are now solely applied from job strata.
- AI with Clone Army Origin now creates clone vats to keep their colonies alive.
- Starbases should now correctly reflect their new sensor range on the monthly tick.
- Ancient Saturator Artillery tech now unlocks the Spinal Mount Bow section for battleships.
- Fixed decloaking in a system with pre-ftls not correctly firing the event to increase awareness.
- Broken Shackles empires with robots outlawed now correctly purge machine and mechanical pops.
- Terraforming a planet now also has a chance of triggering an awareness increase.
- Fix crash when a species doesn’t have a valid archetype
Removed ability to use the “reveal yourself” diplomatic action while you’re already revealing yourself. - Pre-FTL agreements like “give technology” now get correctly removed once a pre-FTL civilization becomes spacefaring.
- Blocked “Salacious Affair” envoy event from firing on pre-FTL worlds.
- Removing the option of upgrading at neutral starbases.
- Fixed the Fear of the Dark Separatist country being localized incorrectly in German, Polish and Spanish.
- Added correct icon for Negative Media Coverage modifier.
- If a pre-FTL society has more than one planet then none will keep being available for observation once the society becomes fully aware.
- Dig sites should no longer generate minor artifacts for users that do not own Ancient Relics DLC.
- Corrected icon for Declining Healthcare modifier.
- Class-4 Singularity can now be constructed when rewarded by event.
- Made it so you can’t get an option in an espionage event that requires an interference policy that doesn’t allow for espionage.
- Genocidal empires can now use assimilation species rights targeting their species. This should fix Fanatic Purifiers not being able to cybernetically or psionically assimilate lost colonies, splinter planets or the like.
- Adding missing cloaking stat on ship design view.
- Blocking the possibility of terraforming while the planet is under colonization.
- Fixed a crash when loading old savegames.
- Fixed tooltip bug with fleets from defensive pacts in a war.
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