Stellaris #HO

Democratic Election Changes
We've taken some time to make a variety of changes and fixes to democratic elections in 1.8. Rather than being a confusing mess of candidates from the entire leader pool, elections in 1.8 will be centered around factions and faction leaders. Instead of a candidate's vote share being based on their mandate, candidates from faction now get election support directly based on the strength of their faction, so a candidate from a powerful faction has a much better chance of securing an electoratal victory than one from a fringe party. Election candidates will be generated from all faction leaders, with independent candidates added into the mix if there are less than 4 factions that are able to provide candidates. We've also made some changes to the way faction support is calculated when there are species that lack Full Citizenship (and thus the ability to vote and be leaders): Though free Pops without Full Citizenship can still join factions, their support count for only 1/5th the amount that a Full Citizenship pop does when calculating the overall political strength (and thus also vote share) of a faction. We had hoped to also spend some time adding more Mandates for 1.8, but unfortunately didn't end up being able to fit it into our scheudle. However, it's something we're going to revisit as soon as we can spare the time for it.

Leader Max Level
Another change to leaders in general in 1.8 is the rework of the Leader Skills modifier. Where previously Leader Skills modifiers (such as the Talented trait) would increase the base skills of leaders, this has now been reworked into a Leader Max Level modifier that increases the potential skill level cap of your leader. The default skill level cap is still 5, but this can now be increased all the way up to 10 with the right combination of traits, civics, traditions and policies. This will allow empires that focus on raising leader level cap to have extremely powerful leaders, and since all leaders now start at level 1, will also make the Leader Experience Gain modifier far more valuable, especially in synergy with level cap increases.

Core Sector Governors
We've made some changes to governors in 1.8. First of all, the core sector has been changed so that only a single Governor is needed to govern it, rather than one Governor per planet. Also, the effect of Governor skill level has been changed to provide a direct bonus to all resource production in their sector, meaning that highly skilled Governors are now a valuable asset that will significantly strengthen the economy of their sector.

Vassal Creation
Lastly for today, we've reworked the Create Vassal button. Where previously it was hidden away in the Demographics screen and would only let you release entire species whose homeworld you had conquered, the Create Vassal button is now prominently displayed in the planet interface and will allow you to release any (non-capital) planet you own as a vassal, under the governance of any species of your choice that is present on that planet at the time of release. Released vassals will get your empire ethics and authority, but will pick their own civics. In combination with other changes and additions in 1.8 (such as reworking the Domination tree to be all about having subjects rather than annexing them, and the new Feudal Realm civic that lets you control far more vassals without having them rebel), this should make a subject-oriented playstyle far more viable.

and Appropriation
The first new policy added is called 'Land Appropriation'. This policy is available to all ethics and governs whether or not newly conquered planets should have land appropriated from non-citizen species. If this policy is on, any newly conquered planet with less than 5 tiles of unblocked free space will have some non-citizen pops removed to clear way for citizen pops. These pops are either simply removed outright (simulating being driven into slums and fringe regions) or become refugees that will attempt to flee to an empire that will have them. Additionally, any planet that has land seized will get a temporary 'Land Appropriated' modifier that massively increases migration attraction and prevents non-citizen species from reproducing and migrating there while in effect. Non-multispecies AI empires will make use of this policy, meaning that even regular wars of conquest will generate refugees, indirectly boosting refugee haven empires.

Pre-Sapient Policies
The policies for Pre-Sapients (previously Pre-Sentients, we have changed the Sentient/Sapient terminology in 1.8) have been expanded in 1.8. The following policies are now available for choosing how to deal with pre-sapients:

• Extermination: Pre-Sapients are quickly and efficiently exterminated to make room for your Pops.
• Livestock: Pre-Sapients are hunted and eaten, producing food for your empire, though this will slowly deplete their population. They can also be manually purged at will. Depletion is mostly done for balance reasons, as otherwise there would be no reason not to eat them.
• Tolerated: Pre-Sapients are tolerated and will generally not be interfered with, though they can be manually purged or killed off via terraforming.
• Protected: Pre-Sapients are protected from purging and worlds they are living on cannot be terraformed.

Initial Border Status
A new policy has been added that controls the initial border status you have towards other empires: open or closed. This only affects the status of borders after establishing communications and has no effect on empires you have not contacted. It also does not prevent manual opening or closing of borders towards select empires.
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Robotic Workers
The last new policy ties into the changes to artificial intelligence policies discussed in dev diary 78 and is simply a blanket policy for whether robotic workers should be permitted to be built and maintained. If banned, all robot pops in your empire will automatically be disassembled.
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Manual Purging
Finally for today, also as a result of feedback given after dev diary 78, we have brought back the manual Purge button for organic pops as well, though its use is highly restricted. You can manually purge selective Pops only if they are Slaves, non-protected Pre-Sapients, or robotic Pops without citizen rights. The rules for which Pops can be Purged/Disassembled are fully moddable.

Dressing the Corvettes
As anyone who follows the regular discussions in the Stellaris community would have a hard time not knowing, the hot balance topic of the last month or two has been 'naked corvettes'. The term naked corvette refers to using a basic corvette hull fitted with only basic, starting weaponry, eschewing shields, armor and more advanced technology. The reason this is considered such a powerful strategy is because these corvettes are extremely cost-efficient: While a fully fitted out corvette with all the best technologies might be two to three times more effective, it also costs up to ten times as much due to the fact that component mineral cost scales far more than their actual effectiveness, particularly for weapons.

In order to address this, we've gone over the cost of essentially every component and ship hull in the game. The base cost of the corvette hull was raised (a starting corvette now costs 100 instead of ₆₀), component costs were reduced, and the way component cost increases with technology was majorly cut down: Where a small blue laser would previously cost twice as much as a small red laser, it now only costs 3.5 minerals to the red lasers' 3.0, an increase of only _16% instead of 100%. Similar changes were done to utility and required components, and many components had their base cost majorly slashed, so that it should now always be worthwhile to use those hard-earned technologies to upgrade your ships.

While we were changing the ship component costs, we also decided to make some more general balance changes. Many weapons and utilities had their values tuned to be more balanced, here are some of the highlights:

• Flak is now a Point-Defense slot weapon with a high power cost. It has a faster firing rate and better tracking than regular PD, making it ideal to defend against highly evasive missiles and strike craft.
• Strike craft had their evasion buffed, making them harder to bring down quickly without massed PD.
• Missiles and strike craft had their speed majorly increased, so they will no longer take so long to reach the enemy once the fireworks start.
• Tier 1 weapons were rebalanced to make mass drivers no longer the best choice in every situation at the start of the game.

Additionally, we've also made some changes to the targeting algorithm to make it less 'optimal'. Ships will now have a tendency to continue firing on whatever ship they were firing on, so long as that ship is a relatively sensible target for them. In other words, a large weapon will switch from targeting corvettes to targeting battleships the moment it can do so, but a ship armed with disruptors will not automatically switch targets the second the target ship's shields go down, as this targeting hyperefficiency resulted in specialized weapons being far, far better in combat than their stats would indicate. This does not mean they will always keep firing at the same ship, as there is randomness involved, just that they're more likely to.

Missile Retargeting
A frequent complaint about missiles is that their effectiveness is greatly reduced by 'overkill'. What this means is that a number of ships will fire missiles at a single ship, and once say, half of those missiles hit, the ship dies and the other half self-destruct. This results in a lot of wasted shots, particularly when fighting corvettes that can't take a whole lot of hits to begin with. In 1.8, we've added the ability for missiles to retarget. What this means is that each missile has a 'retargeting range', and if their original target dies, they will seek out another target within that retargeting range. Missiles will always retarget at least once, and can potentially retarget multiple times, though each time after the first is less likely. This should address the issue of overkill without having packs of missiles roaming wildly between 20 different targets in lopsided battles.

Destroyer Combat Behaviour
Finally, we've also taken the time to address a common complaint about destroyers. Destroyers are meant to be picket ships that can be fitted with a lot of PD, but their cautious combat behaviour means that the cruisers and corvettes will charge ahead of them, straight into enemy missiles and strike craft, resulting in their PD being of little use. To fix this, the destroyer combat computers have been changed to use a new behaviour, called 'Picket behaviour'. Picket behaviour means that the ship will advance ahead and attempt to intercept enemy missile boats and strike craft, putting their PD cannons to proper use on the frontline.