• New Mods:
  
  • ACOT Starbases X Expanded Starbases
    
  • Ad Astra Technology
    
  • Automate Infrastructure - Hyper Relays and Gateways
    
  • Crisis Manager (End-Game, Mid-Game, and Sleeper Editions)
    
  • Endless Frontier: An Event Mod
    
  • Galactic Campaigns
    
  • Galactic Imperial Tax
    
  • Galactic Imperium Origins
    
  • Ground Command
    
  • Habitat Harm Reduction
    
  • Inflection Point
    
  • Loyal Subjects Have Nothing to Fear
    
  • Merge Bio-Trophies
    
  • Nanite Machines & Distant Star Overhaul
    
  • Nebulae+
    
  • Never Empty L-Cluster
    
  • Orbital Ring Buildings
    
  • Origins Expanded
    
  • Out of Your Shell
    
  • Roma Invicta
    
  • Storage Districts and Solutions
• Removed Mods:
  
  • ACOT + Bug Branch Compatch - This patch was out of date, causing the Fallen Empires to spawn incorrectly according to current ACOT definitions. Here's an example of what was missing previously: https://i.imgur.com/gbZtVLe.png
    
  • More AI Personalities (and the Bug Branch compatch) - After resolving issues with AI personalities in this iteration, I discovered that the bug branch compatch for More AI Personalities was malfunctioning and deleting all the More AI Personalities. The decision was between removing the compatch and have them only affect standard ethic empires, or remove both and have the improved personalities by StarTech. I decided to go the route of removing everything to eliminate bloat, since any empire that generated with these personalities would be at a disadvantage in decision-making compared to a StarTech modified one. I may revisit this and add More AI Personalities again in the future.
    
  • Rise of Cosmic Industry - This was causing issues with the AI, had an option that when enabled would cause crashes, and multiple other minor issues which inevitably lead to removal. Some components are good, and players are able to add it back in manually if they want it.
    
  • Species Traits - This mod was removed for quality. It adds several traits with modifiers that do not belong on traits. Among these were country trust cap, building upkeep, and district upkeep. These modifiers have nothing to do with the pop itself, and instead apply to the country globally for having it be your main species. This breaks a core portion of the design for Stellaris (in my eyes) and should be removed to keep consistency.
    
  • Wider Tooltip - There were times when the tooltip would expand and cover the entire icon of what was hovered. This made some menu navigation, such as buildings, more difficult than necessary.
• Major Changes:
  
  • Civics have been properly patched. This has some pretty dramatic consequences:
    
    • Almost all vanilla civics have increased in power across the board as a result. Several of them are outrageously powerful now. A balance pass will come in the future.
      
    • Many civics that did not work for the Bug Branch authorities now function properly, mainly involving the Democratic and Imperial Megacorps.
      
    • Several of the Bug Branch Governmental Civics were being overwritten and their effects were removed. This has been corrected and those Governmental Civics now function properly.
      
    • There will be slightly more sanity with random civilizations selecting their civics. The AI weightings have been restored to normal and they are less likely to pick counterintuitive civics when generated.
  • Factions have been properly patched. Their demands will now have proper restrictions, improved by Ariphaos patch. AI will now interact with their factions appropriately. Demands that were overwritten by mod conflicts have been restored. QoL for how the demands are displayed has been implemented across the board (green positive, yellow neutral, red negative). All factions now properly generate influence and unity at the correct rate.
    
  • Fallen Empires have been properly patched. Fallen Empires will now properly generate with the ACOT ship designs, technologies, flags, and modifiers that are intended. They also have Bug Branch ethics.
    
  • Modifiers have been properly patched. This has a wide variety of changes that are hard to list. Fallen Empires now have higher naval capacity and armies. Army experience now has higher modifiers. Mineral deposits on planets are significantly more impactful. Difficulty modifiers have been returned and increased, so Grand Admiral AI are significantly stronger.
    
  • Policies have been properly patched. The options from every mod is now available for any previously conflicting policies. You should notice significantly more options under certain policies now. They are also properly configured for use by the empires/ethics that should be able to use them. Entire ascension perks are now functioning as a result of these changes. Policies that were meant to cause breaches of modded resolutions now do so.
    
  • Pop Jobs have been properly patched. This fixes numerous civics, traditions, and traits that affect pops that were previously not working. This also corrects/adjusts their outputs and upkeeps based on the mods in the collection. Pops will now also be generally more intelligent about which job they work.
    
  • Numerous events have been optimized, improved, or fixed. Some were through conflict resolutions, and other were through patches. This should reduce the amount of stutters and hangs during the game and allow events to occur on a wider variety of planets with Planetary Diversity.
• Minor Changes:
  
  • Espionage Operations have been properly patched. This was mostly Expanded Espionage and Diplomacy changes for Pre-FTL operations.
    
  • Federation Laws have been properly patched. You will now see the full modded list of laws when in a federation. They are also now properly restricted for federation types which should not have them.
    
  • Federation Types have been properly patched. A wider variety of AI personalities will have a stronger opinion about what type of federation they want and who they want in it.
    
  • Government Variety Pack civics have been manually patched for compatibility with Bug Branch. The compatibility patch was changing their effects, removing AI weightings, and even outright disabled some civics from GVP while enabling others that are disabled in GVP. These errors have been corrected and GVP is now patched for it's current state with compatibility with Bug Branch.
    
  • Megastructures have been properly patched. This was limited almost exclusively to Gateways, Habitats, and Hyper Relays being adjusted.
    
  • Opinion Modifiers for AI have been properly patched. This will affect some diplomacy weights, and empires opinions of other empires will slightly change from previous versions.
    
  • Personalities for AI have been properly patched. They will now be selected using the weightings from Bug Branch and run their empires using StarTech parameters.
    
  • Pop Categories have been properly patched. This allows many of the traits from Lithoid Supremacy to work properly, the upkeep from Bio-Synths in Planetary Diversity: Unique Planets to apply, and several other minor fixes.
    
  • Scripted Effects have been properly patched. This has miscellaneous effects that are hard to quantify or explain.
    
  • Ship Section Templates have been properly patched. This adds some sections that were previously overwritten by mod conflicts. It also resolves several issues with Stellar Bastions.
    
  • Special Projects have been properly patched. This has very minimal effects.
    
  • Trade Conversions have been properly patched. This fixes an issue where certain trade conversion policies were not giving the correct resources.
    
  • Additional Galactic Community Resolutions have been properly patched. This will be a slow process where these resolutions are patched over future iterations, since they are among the most difficult content to patch properly with relatively low impact on the game in total. In this iteration, many Emperor resolutions are now patched to work between New Galactic System, More Emperor & Custodian Resolutions, and Expanded Espionage and Diplomacy.
    
  • Education Compounds and Knowledge Hubs from Advanced Policies has been worked into a base structure for the vanilla Institute and Supercomputer for normal and gestalt empires respectively. They now share significant similarities and Educator/Knowledge Melder jobs will carry over into the upgraded version.
    
  • Clone Vats are now available before researching Cloning, as long as you have Engineered Evolution and adopted the Genetics tree. Clone Birth-Labs from Organic Zealots have been reworked into an upgrade for the Clone Vat after you have researched Cloning. Jobs and functionality now carry over from the Clone Vat. Organic pop growth from Clone Vats and their new upgrade have been nerfed substantially in this update, but they are still good.
    
  • Various other buildings have been integrated to the Limitless Stellaris streamlining. This mostly includes adding a tooltip for it's type and tier, adjusting resource costs, and making small adjustments to increase their usability. Many buildings which served identical purposes to another one were disabled.
    
  • Ad Astra Technology edicts have been converted from 10-year duration edicts into permanent edicts with upkeep. They have kept their initial cost, but will remain active for as long as the upkeep is paid.
    
  • Economic Mastery ascension perk from Unique Ascension Perks has been re-enabled. This was previously disabled due to having EMEX and Bug Branch active. Since the trade policies are patched properly now, this perk functions properly.
    
  • Daemonic Incursion Doorway event chance settings are now set automatically.
    
  • Fixed an issue with ringworld graphical scaling size. Other graphic scaling will be fixed in the future. Thank you to @Jon for finding where this needed to change.
    
  • Disabled the unlocalized leader trait for scientists which granted archaeology speed.
    
  • Disabled the Gaia and Nano-Organisms traits from Trait Diversity. This is both for balance and reduction of bloat. A more thorough review of traits will come in the future.
    
  • Disabled the Electroids Fallen Empire. It was not acting as an appropriate Fallen Empire in many regards.
    
  • Disabled prescripted countries Amaryllians/Technocracy of Man (Void Dwellers Expanded), Tiria (Forgotten History), and Fareen (Nanite Machines & Distant Stars Overhaul). These prescripted countries did not have the proper civics or ethics for Bug Branch.
• Balance:
  
  • Reduced the module slots on starbases from 5/10/15/20/25 to 4/8/12/16/22.
    
  • Added -5% Empire Size from Pops to the Autonomous gestalt form ethic.
    
  • Further improvements to AI's ability to compete in the galaxy.
    
    • AI Difficulty modifiers have been re-enabled. Selecting Captain to Grand Admiral difficulty will give the AI empires bonuses to their production again. Ensign provides no bonuses, and Cadet will provide bonuses to the player. These were previously disabled by Dynamic Difficulty. The new modifiers follow Omega's Stellaris Addition's version of difficulty modifiers and is significantly more difficult than vanilla.
      
    • Asteroid Sighted event will no longer occur for AI. This bugged them out since they would not send their ships to destroy the asteroid, and their construction and science ships would be stuck in the system until the asteroid hit the planet. This would last about a year and put several AI civilian ships out of commission for that duration.

Important Note: These patch notes do not include changes from other mods which were merged in during this update. Several mods have undergone balance adjustments over the course of developing this update. These notes are specifically Limitless Stellaris changes which are not reflected in the mods being used.

• New Mods:
  
  • Assimilate All The Pops!
    
  • Fewer Habitable Planets: 25% (+Real Space Patch)
    
  • Hemothep's Dynamic Difficulty
    
  • Paragon Leaders Expanded
    
  • Real Space: Ships in Scaling
• Removed Mods:
  
  • Ad Astra Technology - While it added a huge amount of technology and buildings, it adds too much bloat to technology, edicts, and buildings that it's just overwhelming to try and streamline all of it. Buildings were essentially just a district on a building slot, the technologies were 1-5% modifiers, and the armies were redundant with the other ones offered by alternate mods. Overall, this mod is being removed because it is competing for a major content slot among other extremely high quality mods, and unfortunately falls short to ACOT, Gigastructural Engineering, and the other major mods present in the collection.
    
  • All Ascension Paths - This was upgraded into "Assimilate All The Pops!" which accomplishes the same thing, but with a cleaner implementation that does not require manual edicts or similar. This mod was a huge assistance in cleaning up the issues with Assimilation that cropped up in v11, and will enable much faster troubleshooting with assimilation errors in the future (if they occur).
    
  • All Leviathans Spawns - This was redundant with the Real Space version of the patch.
    
  • All System Spawns - This was redundant with the Real Space version of the patch. It also overwrote some objects and may have caused a few issues previously.
    
  • BorderChanger - This has a soft incompatibility with Immersive Beautiful Stellaris, overwriting some of the aesthetic changes. It's not a major issue, but this mod is being removed for an increase in compatibility and polish for the collection overall. It can be added again if you prefer that border style, just ensure it's under Immersive Beautiful Stellaris for it to take effect properly.
    
  • DarkSpace (and Scaling Patch) - This was a tough decision to make, but I believe it's for the best. While I really enjoy the array of content that DarkSpace offers, it simply has too many flaws in regards to polish, balance, and style. It doesn't fit in the collection. I had been maintaining editing almost every civic, origin, and ascension perk to try and balance or fix the minor issues with them all. Once I took a step back and looked at what I had been doing, it occurred to me that DarkSpace simply doesn't fit the vision for Limitless Stellaris. The power it provides is too high, the icons it uses are out of place, the civics show when they shouldn't during empire selection, the megastructures do not show in the outliner, and so many more small issues. Instead of going out of my way to fix all the errors and rebalance it, I'm removing DarkSpace. I may revisit it far in the future when I can dedicate more time to implementation (perhaps after NSC2), but for the time being it's being removed from Limitless Stellaris. Due to it's minimalistic overwrite nature, you can add DarkSpace back into the collection independently with minimal issues.
    
  • Dynamic Difficulty: More Modifiers - This mod was overwriting the Dynamic Difficulty: Ultimate Customization menu and preventing it from being used. Removed to restore full functionality to the base mod.
    
  • Edicts of the Enclaves - It's not a very clear implementation. While possibly useful, it does not properly display the reputation gains that would occur (or apply them, I can't be sure). Either way, this is being removed as cleanup for the edict screen. It can be added independently with no issues because of no overwrites.
    
  • Electroids Species Pack - This mod doesn't meet the quality standards I'm looking for. The implementation is incorrect, using modifiers for reduction and addition to upkeep instead of properly implementing the upkeep through pop categories and inline scripts. Additionally, it adds some of the worst civics I have ever seen which are additionally locked to the origins from the species. When using the species, attempting to random a name will do nothing. There are some concepts here which are really neat, such as the Aurora Habitats and the requirement to turn stars into black holes. However, on the whole it just doesn't hit the mark and is being removed to reduce bloat and improve collection cohesiveness. This mod can be added back into the collection with only very minor issues.
    
  • Fix Slave Policies - Would require overwriting Merger rules in order to function properly. I would prefer to not have any mod overwriting Merger since it is updated frequently. This mod will likely malfunction if added to the collection independently.
    
  • Fleet Transfer Mod - I never saw an opportunity to use this mod, and it takes up valuable space on the edict menu. Can be added back with no issues as it has zero overwrites.
    
  • Galactic Politics - This mod has some great ideas. The tradition trees scale with the progression of the galaxy and the resolutions have some really interesting dynamics to affect the political landscape. However, the execution falls short, specifically on the tradition trees. The player is never informed what the scaling effects are, and certain stats are completely hidden from being shown until the full tradition tree is unlocked. This is a poor design and causes the trees to look incredibly weak if you're not aware of what they do, and be incredibly strong if you have the hidden knowledge of what happens when you take them. As a result, this doesn't hit the quality mark I'm looking for, and is being removed as a result. I hope to see this mod develop in the future and add it into the collection again. If you want to try it yourself, it can be added with no issues that I'm aware of.
    
  • Intel Expanded (and Repeating Script Templates + UI Overhaul Dynamic Patch) - During testing it occurred to me that the Intel Expanded interfaces were not displaying modded... anything. It would not account for modded techs, modded ascension perks, traditions, or anything of the sort. Upon looking more closely at how to implement the modded content, I started looking into Repeating Script Templates, which Intel Expanded relies upon. It started to dawn on me how much effort implementing mod compatibility would be for a collection of this size. The decision was one of two options: Remove Intel Expanded because it does not function properly, or accept the fact it does not work for mods. I'm opting to remove it because it could be confusing for some players who do not understand it's not a full implementation. If this mod sees polish in the future and gets massive amounts of mod compatibility support, I would be willing to revisit it.
    
  • No Default Paradox Species - This was preventing UNE and other default prescripted countries from appearing. I learned later down the line that Bug Branch properly patches these countries with proper ethics and civics, so this is being removed and the default prescripted countries will become available again. I may do a pass and remove some of the more redudant/boring prescripted later down the line, but that will be an effort independent from this mod. This mod can be added to the collection independently if you do not want the default prescripted to appear.
    
  • Real Space: Color Out of Deep - I just didn't like how this adjusted the visuals towards the inner area of the galaxy. It seems too bright and colorful. This is being removed to allow Immersive Beautiful Stellaris to create a more holistic visual aesthetic. Color Out of Deep can be added again with no issues if you prefer the visuals.
    
  • Real Space: Ships in Scaling Lite - See the "Ships in Scaling" section below for more details on what's happening here.
    
  • Starbase Buildings and Modules - This mod was offering the production module slots, such as solar panels, power generators, hydroponics bays, etc. These modules were outrageously overpowered and caused starbases to power the early game economy harder than any alternative. They single-handedly trivialized early game empire management by having 10x efficiency outputs for the price of 50 alloys. This was exacerbated by the additional output buildings that it offered, which was overwriting the standard vanilla starbase buildings which were used for production. With the removal of this mod for the sake of balance, the vanilla starbase buildings that provide production (such as hydroponics bay) are back, being limited to 1 per starbase.
    
  • Starforming - Redundant with Giga Stellar Manipulation Reborn. Can be added again without issue.
    
  • UI Overhaul Dynamic: Improved Text - This has a soft incompatibility with Gigastructural Engineering causing a "?" character to appear on every megastructure. While I like the text, I'm removing this until it's fully compatible without minor issues.
• Major Changes:
  
  • Galactic Empire events have been properly patched. Ascending to galactic emperor will now respect the policies chosen to avoid changing government or flag. If a megacorp ascends to galactic emperor, they will now be an Imperial Corporate authority empire instead of an Imperial one, allowing them to continue as a Megacorp. Additional resolutions from mods will trigger and remove properly when the galactic empire is formed. Other events related to the galactic empire have been improved for compatibility.
    
  • Solar System Initializers have been properly patched. Real Sol Textures now applies to Sol systems. Real Space generation has been applied to all systems. ACOT and AOT's Fallen Empire system initializers have been restored to their full functionality. You will notice systems will generally have more detail and spacial diversity than before. Marauder systems will now have the correct graphical culture applied by Great Khan Expanded. Many empires spawned during their system spawn now have proper ethics and civics from Bug Branch.
    
  • Species Rights have been properly patched. This solves issues with assimilation of varying kinds. This also solves conflicts with certain origins and civics being unable to set the rights on species correctly. The modifiers of the rights are now merged between all of the mods affecting them. Some civic and origin effects also function properly as a result of these changes.
• Building Streamlining:
  
  • Buildings now have an icon before their name giving an indicator of what type of building they are.
    
  • More color separation is now being used for sorting buildings based on how they operate. Blue buildings are empire-unique. Green buildings are planet-unique. Dark green are basic structures. Brown buildings are problem-solving buildings (crime, waste, etc).
    
  • Resource Silo is now a planet-unique building which provides double the previous storage capacity. It no longer offers jobs, instead granting increased worker or menial drone output on the planet.
    
  • Waste management buildings are now limited to 3, but apply a planet-wide reduction to pop waste usage. This bonus increases as they are upgraded. Energy, mineral, and strategic resource upkeep for higher tiers has been increased.
    
  • Molecular Foundries are now categorized as basic resource buildings for Supertensiles and are limited to 5 per planet as a result.
    
  • Frontier Settlement no longer grants 10% increase to energy, minerals, and food from jobs. Build time has been reduced to make it more appealing for new colonies.
    
  • Mountain Stronghold is now a planet-unique building.
    
  • Naval Base is now a planet-unique building.
    
  • Various other minor changes to improve the usability and quality of buildings.
    
  • Disabled Planetary Defense Force Base for performance concerns. Will seek to re-enable these in the future.
    
  • Disabled Aero Base, Garrison Base, Paladin Order buildings for redundancy or not being able to find a place for them.
• Ships in Scaling:
  
  • On July 5th, an update was pushed for Real Space: Ships in Scaling that made Ships in Scaling Lite (and Hard) redundant. The settings were changed from being hardcoded into the sub-mod and moved into a menu for Ships in Scaling.
    
  • As a transition, the Real Space: Ships in Scaling Lite mod that was used for the collection has been removed, and the base mod named only Ships in Scaling has been added.
    
  • In the new variation, ships by default are set to have their cruising (out of combat) speed adjusted dynamically based on the thruster tier they have equipped. Additionally, the mod starts with longer battles enabled which applies a 50% increase to hull, armor, and shields while reducing fire rate by -50% on all ships globally. While this sounds good on paper, keep in mind that these are additive modifiers that are applied after all additional modifiers. In this collection, this is a drop in the bucket and will not have the intended effects.
    
  • As such, settings have been automatically configured and changed for the collection. The dynamic speed based on ship thruster has been disabled. This collection uses modded ship components which are not included in the checks. This reverts cruising speed back to the mod's default of 6x. I have manually overriden the events and tuned it to 4x speed to match Ships in Scaling Hard. The speed from v11 was too high, and often resulted in ships flying past eachother before entering combat. This also reduced the effectiveness of speed increases to ships, and dialing the percent down a bit gives more breathing room to focus on increasing your ship speed and having it matter. Additionally, longer battles options is turned off. These modifiers are meaningless in the scale of this collection and will not have the intended effects.
    
  • The Sublight Speed Reduction from entering combat from Ships in Scaling will come into play, where it was not previously used in Ships in Scaling Lite. This applies a multiplicative -50% sublight speed reduction to ships when they enter combat. This should dramatically slow down the engage and give more opportunity to long-range ships with artillery or strike craft before being zerged by corvettes.
    
  • Additionally, while testing, I encountered many bugs that persisted through the transition. One of these bugs was Colony Ships not properly obtaining the sublight speed increase. This made them incredibly slow in previous iterations. This has been resolved. Additionally, the heavy performance hit that Ships in Scaling used to have has been addressed. I personally re-wrote the events and conditions for applying the modifiers to make it as lightweight as possible. This should dramatically improve performance, especially heading into the later stages of the game.
    
  • Combat engagement minimum range has been increased from 50 -> 100. This will cause ships to enter combat from twice the distance as they previously did. If a ship in either fleet has a weapon that fires more than 100 range, that will be the engagement range instead. This change should hopefully allow the ships to decelerate enough that artillery and strike craft tactics can be properly utilized by the combatants instead of charging into melee range because the cruising sublight speed has not worn off yet.
    
  • TL;DR: Ships will be slightly slower out of combat than before. The sublight speed increase and reduction should be more reliable. Ships will have a multiplicative -50% sublight speed applied as soon as they enter combat. Combat will start from further away.

• Minor Changes:
  
  • Logistic Growth Variable R has been reduced from 2 -> 1.7. This reduces pop growth rate globally by precisely 15%.
    
  • Logistic Pop Growth minimum pop growth contribution changed from 5 -> 10. This will increase early pop growth when colonizing a new planet.
    
  • Starbase & Orbital Ring Buildings have been properly patched. This fixes various minor issues with certain civics or techs not applying properly to buildings. This also re-enables some buildings that were removed from mod conflicts.
    
  • Starbase & Orbital Ring Modules have been properly patched. This corrects most of their modifiers to their intended values. This also re-enables some modules that were removed from mod conflicts.
    
  • Starbase & Orbital Ring Types have been properly patched. This only makes some minor improvements to AI decision making for which type of starbase to build (shipyard, anchorage, etc).
    
  • Technology has been properly patched. This makes various minor tweaks and improvements to the technology weightings.
    
  • Tradition Categories have been properly patched. This mostly affects AI choices for traditions.
    
  • Traditions have been properly patched. This corrects the modifiers on some traditions to reflect the mods that are present. It also improves the AI decision making regarding adopting the traditions.
    
  • Additional events have been properly patched. This opens up more events on various modded planet types instead of being locked to the base game versions. It also resolves minor bugs and issues. This is an ongoing process that will take some time and continue into future versions.
    
  • Additional resolutions have been properly patched. This is an ongoing process that will take some time and continue into future versions.
    
  • Started the process of streamlining decisions. Many decisions will now be color coded and to match how they function. This will be an ongoing process that will take time and continue into future versions.
    
  • Amount of time a policy is "locked" from being changed again has been reduced from 5 years -> 2 years.
    
  • A pass on civics and origins from the following mods has been done, patching them to work properly with Bug Branch's Imperial and Democratic Megacorp authorities. This should cover all the civics and origins in the collection.
    
    • Advanced Policies
      
    • Amazing Civics - Megacorp
      
    • Civic: Organic Zealots
      
    • Empires Expanded
      
    • Expanded Gestalts
      
    • Extra Origins
      
    • Forgotten History
      
    • Galactic Imperium Origins
      
    • Legendary Worlds
      
    • Lithoid Supremacy
      
    • Nanite Machines & Distant Stars Overhaul
      
    • Origins Expanded
      
    • Planetary Diversity
      
    • Plentiful Traditions - Extra Perks
      
    • Useful Heirs
      
    • Venture Politics
  • The Chosen empire, a special empire added in vanilla 3.8 with their own special system/cluster of stars, has had their ethics and civics updated for Bug Branch changes. They have gone from spiritualist to fanatic spiritualist, gained the militarist ethic, and now have Nationalistic Zeal civic.
    
  • ACOT Dark Matter research no longer requires specific traits in order to advance through the science path.
    
  • Arcology Project description updated to reflect that it can be filled with any districts, as long as there is no generator, mining, or farming districts.
    
  • Ringworlds can now execute the Ringworld Arcology Project even if they have Science or Commercial districts. They still cannot have Generator or Farming districts or the decision will be blocked.
    
  • Non-standard ringworlds, such as ecumenopolis ringworlds, can now build Commercial Segments. This was previously locked to the standard ringworlds and squareworlds.
    
  • Capital planets can no longer be set to Storage colony designation.
    
  • Capital planets can no longer be set to Nature or Trash colony designation.
    
  • Fixed an issue where Hyper Relays could not be constructed from the galaxy view.
    
  • Fixed assimilation effect to make it work properly again.
    
  • Fixed a localisation issue with the EED version of Healthcare resolution.
    
  • Fixed an issue where Resolutions Expanded special traits unlocked from the "Special Genes" technology (through a resolution) was not working correctly. They will now only unlock when the resolution is passed and the technology is granted.
    
  • Fixed a load order issue causing the Traditions UI to only display 9 rows instead of the intended 20.
    
  • Fixed an issue with the machine graphical culture which was preventing the addition of Machine Shipset into the collection.
    
  • Disabled the unity-based planetary decisions from Advanced Policies. These were not toggles, making them annoying to upkeep. They were also insanely powerful with their effects, especially for their low cost. They were also designed only for standard ethics, meaning countries using Bug Branch ethics were at a disadvantage. The gestalt versions were bugged and able to be spammed. The names of these decisions were as follows: Trial By Fire, Generation of Peace, Grand Sports Games, Benevolent Gesture, Rite of the Heavens, Competition of the Minds, Uplink Strengthened, As One.
    
  • Disabled the Tragula's Cross, Trin's Promise, and Loh unique systems from spawning. These systems had 3 guaranteed habitable planets with no unique features. Spawning with one nearby would skyrocket an empire, AI or otherwise.
    
  • Disabled Favored Equilibrium and Ghazalian Revelations ascension perks. These are boring/bloat stat-only perks with no pre-requisites.
    
  • Disabled Create Urban Park decision. It's a district in the decision menu. Removed for bloat.
    
  • Disabled Planetary Conscription decision. Other options in the collection overshadowed it, so it's being disabled to make space on the menu.
    
  • Disabled Off-World Immigration and Migration decisions. These were essentially un-usable due to how pop growth works.
• Balance:
  
  • Adjusted the Empire Size upkeep modifier to apply to all resources instead of just energy, minerals, and food. This will put more pressure on strategic resources if your empire size is large. In slight compensation, the penalty has been reduced from +0.15% -> +0.1% upkeep per empire size.
    
  • Advanced City Planning ascension perk has been adjusted from +5 maximum districts -> +5 maximum non-artificial districts. This will no longer affect habitats and ringworlds.
    
  • Clone Vats no longer grants an implicit +1 to organic pop assembly.
    
  • Clone Birth-Labs (the upgrade of Clone Vats) no longer grants an implicit +2 to organic pop assembly.
    
  • Cloning Technicians and Cloning Drones have had their organic pop assembly output reduced from 1.0 -> 0.75.
    
  • Ringworld construction is now capped to 1 per country. This should help mitigate AI empires spamming ringworlds in the mid-game.
    
  • Standard Districts (City, Generator, Mining, Agriculture, Industrial) have had their housing reduced by 1 each. This puts City at 6 base housing and the others at 3 base housing.
    
  • Commercial, Science, Administrative, Religious, and Military districts provided by More Standard Districts have had their housing increased from 2 -> 3 to match the other standard districts.
    
  • Capital buildings of tier 3 or higher (requiring 25 pops) now grant +1 to country leader capacity.
    
  • Resource Capacity increase from Storage Districts on Ringworlds has been reduced from 100k/200k/300k/400k/500k to 50k/100k/150k/200k/250k (based on tech).
    
  • Void Sphere planets have had 60% of their colony designation bonuses moved from the colony designation to the planet class. This is meant to reduce the effectiveness of planetary ascensions on this specific planet type.
    
  • The repeatable technologies that granted Waste jobs per pop have been changed from infinite repeatables to having one level.
    
  • Enforcer job crime reduction reduced from -25 -> -15.
    
  • Patrol Drone job deviancy reduction reduced from -20 -> -10.
    
  • Expansionist Development ascension perk no longer grants -10% empire size from pops.
    
  • Galactic Ascendency ascension perk empire size modifier reduced from -20% -> -5%.
    
  • Imperial Prerogative and Colonial Enterprises ascension perks empire size from colonies value adjusted from -55%/-60%/-65%/-70%/-75% -> -15%/-20%/-25%/-30%/-35% (based on government perks).
    
  • Authorities Balance Pass
    
  • Direct Democratic authority faction approval increased from +10% -> +20%.
    
  • Direct Democratic authority now grants +2 to country leader capacity.
    
  • Direct Democratic authority now grants -20% tech cost from empire size.
    
  • Democratic Corporate authority now has a +50% empire size penalty.
    
  • Democratic Corporate authority commercial pact multiplier increased from +20% -> +50%.
    
  • Democratic Corporate authority now grants +10% to faction approval.
    
  • Democratic Corporate authority now grants +2 to leader pool size.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority now has a +50% empire size penalty.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority commercial pact multiplier increased from +20% -> +50%.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority now has a -10% faction approval penalty.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority now grants +10% trade value.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority now grants +0.2 monthly influence per governor.
    
  • Imperial Corporate authority now grants +200 base country edict fund.
    
  • Ruler Councilors Balance Pass
    
  • Direct Democratic Rulers now grant +1 to all research per month from councilors per level.
    
  • Direct Democratic Rulers now grant +1% country trade value per level.
    
  • Oligarchic Rulers now grant +1% resources from jobs per level.
    
  • Dictatorial Rulers now grant +2% country influence per level.
    
  • Dictatorial Rulers now grant +2% specialist pop output per level.
    
  • Imperial Rulers now grant +0.01 influence per month from governors per level.
    
  • Imperial Corporate Rulers branch office value multiplier increased from 1% -> 5% per level.
    
  • Imperial Corporate Rulers now grant +2% trade value from jobs per level.
    
  • Democratic Corporate Rulers branch office value multiplier increased from 1% -> 5% per level.
    
  • Democratic Corporate Rulers now grant +1% country trade value per level.
    
  • Hive Mind Rulers no longer grant +0.25 organic pop assembly per level.
    
  • Hive Mind Rulers now grant +2% country food per level.
    
  • Hive Mind Rulers now grant +1% complex drone output per level.
    
  • Machine Intelligence Rulers no longer grant +0.25 pop assembly per level.
    
  • Machine Intelligence Rulers no longer grant +1% hull and armor regeneration per level.
    
  • Machine Intelligence Rulers now grant +2% country minerals per level.
    
  • Machine Intelligence Rulers now grant +1% simple drone output per level.
    
  • Ethics Balance Pass
    
  • Anthropocentric and Fanatic Anthropocentric ethic modifier for +1/+2 to non-artificial maximum districts -> +1/+2 maximum districts (including artificial).
    
  • Fanatic Anthropocentric ethic habitability penalty changed from -10% -> -20%.
    
  • Cooperative and Fanatic Cooperative ethic no longer grants reduction to empire size from pops.
    
  • Cooperative and Fanatic Cooperative ethic no longer grants reduction to pop housing usage.
    
  • Cooperative and Fanatic Cooperative ethic now grant +10%/+20% to Diplomatic Weight respectively.
    
  • Cooperative and Fanatic Cooperative ethic now grant +15%/+30% to Housing respectively.
    
  • Egalitarian and Fanatic Egalitarian ethic modifier for jobs per X pops has been changed from entertainers -> bureaucrats.
    
  • Pacifist and Fanatic Pacifist ethic no longer grant reduction to empire size from pops.
    
  • Pacifist and Fanatic Pacifist ethic now grant +1/+2 to Encryption respectively.
    
  • Xenophobe and Fanatic Xenophobe ethic pop growth bonus has been reduced from 10%/20% -> 5%/10%. This aligns it with the default Bug Branch modifier values.
    
  • Xenophobe and Fanatic Xenophobe ethic now grant +1/+2 to Decryption respectively.
    
  • Traditions Balance Pass
    
  • Adaptability - Adoption no longer grants -10% pop housing usage.
    
  • Adaptability - Adoption now grants +15% housing.
    
  • Administratum - Adoption empire size modifier reduced from -20% -> -5%.
    
  • Administratum - Encrypted Archives empire size from districts modifier reduced from -25% -> -10%.
    
  • Aptitude - Finisher leader capacity reduced from 4 -> 2.
    
  • Benevolence - Satisfaction Surveys no longer grants -10% Empire Size from Pops.
    
  • Benevolence - Satisfaction Surveys now grants +2% diplomatic weight per envoy.
    
  • Cybernetics - Modular Cybernetics species cost multiplier reduced from -25% -> -10%.
    
  • Domination - Finisher no longer grants -10% Empire Size from Pops.
    
  • Domination - Finisher now grants +10 unity per governor.
    
  • Environmentalism - Sustainable Development no longer grants -50% Empire Size from Districts.
    
  • Environmentalism - Sustainable Development now grants +1 maximum districts on non-artificial planets.
    
  • Expansion - Courier Network Empire Size from Systems reduced from -25% -> -5%.
    
  • Expansion - Courier Network Empire Size from Planets reduced from -25% -> -10%.
    
  • Harmony - Kinship Empire Size from Pops reduced from -10% -> -5%.
    
  • Removals
    
  • Disabled Genius Pregnancy ascension perk.
    
  • Disabled Titan Battlegroup armies.
• AI Improvements:
  
  • Hemothep's Dynamic Difficulty has been added to the collection. This provides a scaling bonus to the AI based on their relative strength to the player. If the player is too strong, they will get more bonuses. If the player becomes equivalent or weak, the bonuses will taper off and be removed over time.
    
  • AI Difficulty modifiers no longer grant bonuses to pop growth, pop assembly, or organic pop assembly.
    
  • AI are now extremely likely to select Engineered Evolution if the opportunity presents itself.
    
  • AI have been heavily encouraged to build Clone Vats and upgrade them as soon as possible.

Important Note: These patch notes do not include changes from other mods which were merged in during this update. Several mods have undergone balance adjustments over the course of developing this update. These notes are specifically Limitless Stellaris changes which are not reflected in the mods being used.

• New Mods:
  
  • Branch Office Expansion Planner (by Persepheus)
    
  • Colored Map Icons Gigastructural Engineering & NSC2 (by acideiffel)
    
  • Colored Star Badges 0-20 (by acideiffel)
    
  • Conditional Leader Backgrounds (by Pancakelord)
    
  • Diagrapher's Factions and Ethics Mod (by kuyan-judith)
    
  • Diagrapher's Trait Mod (by kuyan-judith) - See the Traits Streamlining section below for details on integration.
    
  • Elves of Stellaris (by Princess Stabbity, Porev, TheGrandN)
    
  • Extended Lithoids (by mute)
    
  • Extended Machines (by mute)
    
  • Extended Toxoids (by mute)
    
  • Frameworld Phanon Great Wall Patch (by PIECAT)
    
  • Harvest Engine Crisis (by Archaeon, Dunno)
    
    • Harvest Engine Crisis - Ships in Scaling Patch
  • L-Cluster Plus (by Klarac)
    
  • More Origins Mod (by Malthus)
    
  • NSC2 Season 8 (by CaptainX3) - See the NSC section below for details on integration.
    
    • NSC2 - Ships in Scaling Patch
  • Standalone Ancient Ships (by Ajey, thepigemperor2)
    
    • Standalone Ancient Ships - Ships in Scaling Patch
  • The Prime Flesh (by Evereal)
    
    • The Prime Flesh - Ships in Scaling Patch
  • The Storm Cluster (by FirePrince, SirBlackAxe)
    
    • The Storm Cluster - Ships in Scaling Patch
  • Zenith of Fallen Empires (by Kolyn)
    
    • Zenith of Fallen Empires - Ships in Scaling Patch
• Removed Mods:
  
  • Astro's Stellaris Overhaul: Exciting Events - This added an event which would pick a system at random from the galaxy and detonate it somewhere between 90-110 years into the game. This could mark your homeworld system or a unique system with important events, anomalies, or factions. Even when disabled, the other events here do not match the quality or balance standards I have for events, and this mod is being removed as a result. It has no overwrites and can be added again without issue.
    
  • Automate Infrastructure: Hyper Relays and Gateways - Hyper Relays are now disabled, and this mod is no longer useful as a result.
    
  • Colored Map Icons & Colored Map Icons Gigastructural Engineering - Upgraded to the version which supports NSC2.
    
  • Ground Command - Adds a huge amount of armies to the game, but all of which are immediately rendered obsolete by the other armies from mods in the collection. It also follows a "modern" theme of infantry/tank/air instead of the "sci-fi" theme such as mechs and psionic avatars from other mods. In the end, it just doesn't seem like it fit, and is being removed as a result. This has a single conflict in the collection - the conscript army from Advanced Policies - but will work perfectly fine if added again.
    
  • Hemothep's Dynamic Difficulty - This has been rewritten and merged into the Compatch. Please see the AI Improvements section for more details.
    
  • Interdimensional Crate Crisis - There are several events and mechanics from this crisis that do not meet my quality standards. As a result, it's being removed. It can be added to the collection again without issue.
    
  • More Localized Colors - This edits a single file with changed colors. I have since adjusted this file and done further changes. As a result, it is no longer necessary to include in the collection.
    
  • Origins Expanded - This mod does not meet the quality standard I have for the collection. There is a huge amount of origins provided in the mod, but most are simply some modifiers applied to the country at the start. There is a few which are exceptions to this, having additional content, but overall it feels like the mod is more bloated than not. This mod can be added again to the collection with no issues.
    
  • Resettle Colony - This was redundant with Abandon Colony which accomplishes the same with a better implementation.
    
  • Simple Leader Skill Icons - Replaced with Colored Leader Badges 0-20.
    
  • Smarter Hyper Relays: Improved AI - Hyper Relays are now disabled, and this mod is no longer useful as a result.
    
  • Technology Ascendant - This mod was one of the largest performance hits in the entire collection each month. It requires too much processing power for the little content it offers. I reviewed the code and could not think of an easy way to improve the performance without hindering the intent of the mod. As a result, it's being removed strictly for performance purposes. It has no overwrites and can be added back into the collection with no issues.
    
  • Unique Ascension Perks - Major mod removal that was difficult to make the decision to remove. The problem with Unique Ascension Perks is that it exacerbates some of the most non-performant parts of the game. It can generate huge quantities of new pops with minimal investment (robotic assemblers, reproductive mastery), trivialize some of the management of your colonies (chosen ruler), and even severely increase the power of trade empires (economical mastery). My original intent was to disable everything I felt was out of place, but as I try more and more of the ascension perks, I begin to realize that these perks can be broken in one instance and useless in another. It's going to be impossible to keep this mod balanced while preventing it from being the best or worst mod in the collection. I may end up reviewing it way later down the line, but for now it has no place. I have changed all edits I did to the mod to check if it's active now, meaning it should remain reasonably compatible if added again.
• Major Changes:
  
  • A configuration menu for Limitless Stellaris has been created. This will appear at the start of the game, and can also be accessed from the Dynamic Mod Menu. It contains a sub-menu with mods to open the configurations for, as well as several other collection-unique configuration settings.
    
  • Habitable Planets have been reduced from 25% to 5%. This only affects non-special systems which generate at the start of the galaxy. It does not affect guaranteed habitables. It also does not affect terraforming candidates and anomaly/archaeology converted habitable planets. In the end, this should only be a mild decrease to the number of habitable planets.
    
  • Traits have been properly patched. This has a huge range of consequences for traits involving their modifiers, organization, functionality, and how the AI utilizes them. A section below has been designated to discuss this in more detail, so please look at the "Traits Streamlining" section for more details about this change.
    
  • The modifier "Resources from Jobs" now applies to trade value from jobs as well. This also applies to stratum-specific output modifiers, such as "% increased Worker Output" which will apply to trade value from workers. Note that this also applies in the reverse, so reduction to resources from jobs or stratum output will reduce trade value from relevant jobs as well.

• NSC Integration:
  
  • NSC changes a large amount of the game and is highly incompatible with other mods in the collection. This section will go over the changes that were made in order to properly integrate it into the collection's ecosystem.
    
  • Starbases
    
    • Stellar Bastion starbase from Expanded Starbases is no longer an upgrade from the Citadel. The Citadel now upgrades to NSC's Grand Citadel, which then upgrades to NSC's Solar Stronghold. The Solar Stronghold will now upgrade to Expanded Starbase's Stellar Bastion.
      
    • New Progression in full: Outpost -> Starport -> Stronghold -> Star Fortress -> Citadel -> Grand Citadel -> Solar Stronghold -> Stellar Bastion
      
    • With the new progression, stats have changed across the board for each of the tiers. The new values will be given in sequential order starting with the Outpost and ending with the Stellar Bastion.
      
    • Stellar Bastion technology now requires Solar Stronghold to be researched before becoming available as a tech draw. Tech weight and cost for Stellar Bastion has been increased.
      
    • Base Health: 7.5k/15k/35k/90k/160k/220k/350k/500k
      
    • Base Armor: 1k/2k/5k/20k/40k/60k/100k/200k
      
    • Module Slots: 0/3/6/10/14/18/22/26
      
    • Building Slots: 0/1/2/4/6/8/10/15
      
    • Defense Platform Slots: 3/6/9/15/21/27/35/50
      
    • Weapon Range Modifier: 20%/25%/30%/35%/40%/50%/60%/75%
      
    • Base Alloy Cost: 100/200/500/1250/3500/8500/20000/50000 (Cost can change with different empires/ethics)
      
    • All build times have been standardized to 360 days, mimicing NSC's default values.
      
    • All starbase evasion modifiers have been changed from -50% -> -100%.
      
    • All starbases no longer have implicit shields.
      
    • The weaponry on each stage of starbase has been reviewed. Here is the new weapon loadouts:
      
      • Outpost: 1 Large, 2 Medium, 1 Small, 1 PD, 4 Large Utility, 1 Auxiliary
        
      • Starport: 2 Large, 4 Medium, 2 Small, 2 PD, 8 Large Utility, 2 Auxiliary
        
      • Starhold: 4 Large, 6 Medium, 4 Small, 4 PD, 16 Large Utility, 3 Auxiliary
        
      • Star Fortress: 6 Large, 8 Medium, 6 Small, 6 PD, 4 Strikecraft, 24 Large Utility, 4 Auxiliary
        
      • Citadel: 12 Large, 14 Medium, 6 Small, 6 PD, 6 Strikecraft, 36 Large Utility, 5 Auxiliary
        
      • Grand Citadel: 2 Extra Large, 12 Large, 12 Medium, 6 PD, 6 Strikecraft, 48 Large Utility, 6 Auxiliary
        
      • Solar Stronghold: 4 Extra Large, 20 Large, 20 Medium, 10 PD, 10 Strikecraft, 60 Large Utillity, 8 Auxiliary
        
      • Stellar Bastion: 2 Titan, 6 Extra Large, 20 Large, 26 Medium, 10 PD, 10 Strikecraft, 80 Large Utility, 10 Auxiliary
• Trait Streamlining:
  
  • Traits are now beginning to be organized in order based on their function. The organization tries to follow this outline, with traits higher on the list appearing first:
    
    • Unique - Characteristics (eg. Hive Mind, Mechanical, Machine)
      
    • Unique - Ascensions (eg. Cybernetic, Psionic)
      
    • Unique - Species-Limited (eg. Aquatic, Budding, Radiotrophic)
      
    • Unique - Other (eg. Delicious, Self-Modified, Void Dweller)
      
    • Resources (eg. Ingenous, Industrial)
      
    • Upkeep (eg. Conservational, Wasteful)
      
    • Pop Modifiers (eg. Communal, Decadent, Conformists)
      
    • Leader Modifiers (eg. Talented, Quick Learners)
      
    • Army Modifiers (eg. Very Strong, Resilient)
  • Note: Not all traits follow this organization yet. There are several mods which do not follow this streamlining approach yet. All vanilla traits now follow this organization and a few minor trait mods also do the same. More work on this will be done in the future.
    
  • The traits have sub-organization, so in the case of resources, you will see traits that mostly involve minerals in the same "group" to select from.
    
  • Organization also extends to point usage. Highest point usage is sorted first in the group, descending down into the negative point usage as you go down the list.
    
  • The mod Leader Traits: Merge-Add Species Traits had many changes that were getting overwritten in previous versions. This has been remedied, and genetic modification can now remove or add ascension traits such as Psionic, Cybernetic, and more. This should make xenophile empires more appealing as you now have the option of either using assimilation or genetic modification to apply the traits. There are still some restrictions.
    
  • Almost all the custom traits from Enhanced Robomodding were getting removed because of file overwrites. This has been corrected, and the custom traits for robots are now properly available under correct conditions.
    
  • Almost every vanilla trait has had their modifiers doubled from Diagrapher's Traits Mod. This also works in the reverse, where negative traits have been decreased by double for negative point usage traits. This will make traits significantly more impactful, and the downsides of traits more apparent.
    
  • Latent Psionic trait now grants +10% trade value from jobs.
    
  • Psionic trait now grants +25% trade value from jobs.
• Minor Changes:
  
  • Additional galactic community resolutions have been properly patched. This improves their functionality, increases the weightings for how much AI likes the resolutions, and more. It also resolves minor bugs and issues. This is an ongoing process that will take some time and continue into future versions.
    
  • Additional events have been properly patched. This opens up more events on various modded planet types instead of being locked to the base game versions. It also resolves minor bugs and issues. This is an ongoing process that will take some time and continue into future versions.
    
  • Sound files have been properly merged. This fixes issues such as the agenda sound not playing when an agenda completes, certain sound effects not playing on the UI, and more. (Credit to @Jon)
    
  • Fleet power calculations have been returned to vanilla comparisons instead of using ACOT Defines. Additional changes were made to prevent the overflow issue. Single ships, such as starbases, will now have more accurate fleet power comparisons to fleets of many smaller ships, such as 50 corvettes. This should improve the accuracy of fleet power across the board.
    
  • Most civics that cannot be added or removed after the game starts have been colored orange/brown. This sorts them to the top of the civics list. Bug Branch governmental civics have been colored a dark blue, sorting them below the unmodifiable civics.
    
  • Trade policies improved by the Commerce tradition tree are now better organized in the list and have an icon noting what type of policy they are.
    
  • Adjusted galactic market foundation to ignore energy income. The winner will be selected solely on their nomination level and system trade value.
    
  • Precursor systems have had one of their terraforming candidates removed. The special modifiers that rolled on it will instead roll on the other terraforming candidate.
    
  • Resolved a conflict causing culture worker ethic-based production to be incorrect.
    
  • Healthcare Focus policy can no longer be used by gestalt empires. Localisation of the policy has also been improved.
    
  • Conditions for the Initial Border Status policy have been improved to show a smaller tooltip.
    
  • Removed many of the ecology events which would apply blockers or negative modifiers. Waste is now only related to the planet modifier that is active each month.
    
  • Delay for descriptions to appear on tooltips reduced from 0.80 seconds -> 0.05 seconds.
    
  • Fixed an issue with a define causing immigration to malfunction, preventing pop growth from immigration from exceeding extremely small values.
    
  • Fixed an issue causing the Knowledge Hub upgrade to destroy itself immediately upon upgrading it.
    
  • Fixed an issue with the AI Citizen Rights policy not having proper conditions.
    
  • Fixed an issue where gateway sites could not be upgraded to full gateways.
    
  • Fixed an issue where wormholes would not let you enter some enemy systems correctly. (Credit to @Jon)
    
  • Fixed an issue where galactic market foundation relocation was unaffected by the modded weighting.
    
  • Fixed an issue where the Sustainable Development origin would not function correctly on planets added by Planetary Diversity. (Credit to @Omega)
    
  • Fixed an issue with the graphical scaling of the Phanon Star Traveller, Phanon Great Wall, and Star Imploder. (Credit to @Jon)
    
  • Disabled Hyper Relays to reduce mid/late-game lagg.
    
  • Disabled Eye For Administration leader traits as they are currently bugged.
• Balance Changes:
  
  • Starting energy credits reduced from 1,500 -> 1,000.
    
  • Starting minerals reduced from 5,000 -> 1,000.
    
  • Starting food reduced from 750 -> 500.
    
  • Starting alloys reduced from 1,500 -> 500.
    
  • Starting influence reduced from 500 -> 250.
    
  • Sublight cruising speed for ships reduced from +400% -> +300%.
    
  • Corporate Democratic Authority now grants +5 of all research per scientist.
    
  • Replicator job pop assembly reduced from 1 -> 0.75.
    
  • Gestalt councilors unity from leaders per level reduced from 5 -> 2.
    
  • Ascension Perks
    
  • Ascension of Flesh calculation has been adjusted. Previously, it provided +4 organic pop assembly per 1 food:1 pop, with a maximum of +40 organic pop assembly. The new calculation is +0.5 organic pop assembly per 1 food:1 pop, with a maximum of +10 organic pop assembly.
    
  • Civics
    
  • Banking Giant interest rate from Stellar Banking Institute changed from 6% -> up to 6%. The new formula now reduces the interest rate as energy credit stockpile increases. It scales down from 6% smoothly, using 3% interest at 1M energy credits as a target. You can view the full formula here[www.wolframalpha.com].
    
  • Leader Bonuses
    
  • Admirals no longer grant +2% ship weapon damage per level.
    
  • Admiral command limit per level reduced from 10 -> 5.
    
  • Generals no longer grant +10% army health per level.
    
  • Governors no longer grant 5 amenities per level.
    
  • Governor crime reduction per level reduced from -5 -> -3.
    
  • Scientists no longer gain +2.5 evasion per level.
• Performance Optimizations:
  
  • These listed improvements are mentioning certain components of the collection which have been improved/optimized. Time reductions listed are not for overall performance, but for that specific component. As an example:
    
    • Ecology Mod's pollution event was about 10% of the monthly pulse time.
      
    • We will assume that a monthly pulse took 5 seconds.
      
    • Pollution event was 0.5 seconds in this example.
      
    • Time reduction to 40% means that event now takes 0.2 seconds.
      
    • Monthly pulse now takes 4.7 seconds.
  • Removed an expensive AI espionage activity modifier. Time reduced to ~20%.
    
  • Removed Ethic pull relation checks. Time reduced to ~70% on some ethics to ~30% on other ethics.
    
  • Improved Ecology mod trigger for pollution. Time reduced to ~40%. (Credit to @MichaelMakesGames)
• AI Improvements:
  
  • Hemothep's Dynamic Difficulty has been rewritten and merged into the collection's Compatch instead. This comes with some significant adjustments:
    
    • Power of the buff granted to AI is now on a per-AI basis instead of being global. This means that empires that are equivalent to you will no longer halt the buff from increasing for pathetic-strength empires, hindering their ability to catch up.
      
    • This should result in a more equivalent overall galactic community, where only a few AI (usually the ones with advanced starts) are keeping up with the player.
      
    • The buff granted to AI was previously done in 10 stages with different buffs. This has been converted to a single buff that gets multiplied by a value. As a result, the buff strength is no longer capped.
      
    • Since it is no longer capped, the buff has been reduced in power. Additionally, all the buffs provided have been changed to only affect their economy and technology.
      
    • Buff power will now start to decrease immediately upon an empire reaching equivalent overall power and tech level to the strongest player.
      
    • The rewritten dynamic difficulty system can be turned off in the new Limitless Stellaris configuration menu.
  • Fixed an issue where AI would fail to properly build modules or upgrade their starbases.