Stellaris 4.4.6 hotfix released (fdde) Patch Notes (9th July 2026)

Bugfix​

• Arkships now have a 10 year cooldown after benefiting from a Max Aura effect, meaning you can't chain them to get a level 10 ascension Arkship super early.
• Nomads can now build Megastructures in a system containing one of their Waystations even if the system has not been surveyed.
• Fixed that Tombworld Earth was spawning way too often, so often that it would spawn instead of the UNE when playing the GRS or CoM.
• Fixed an issue where pre-FTL earths couldn't have defensive armies (sorry this does not fix the issue of not having the cool unique armies :frowning2: )
• Assault Armies will no longer split into separate Transport Fleets after leaving the planet surface.
• Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.
• Fixed a very rare case where if you settled and left the event open for too long another empire could claim the system. The fix is delaying them from claiming the system for 300 days. Please make a decision before then.
• The CFL should no longer accept Orbital Rings as contestants (even though that’s why they call it a Championship Ring, right?)
• Added a fallback if your arkship was in a hyperjump when progressing through the adAkkaria event chains
• Due to legacy script your capital arkship was never able to find precursors
• Stopped Scan Debris Contract from auto-cancelling on accept
• Blocked the Sectors Map Mode for Nomads.
• Fixed habitats not using the correct entity from your chosen shipset.
• Fixed some scripted issues with refugee modifiers.
• Fixed issues with Payback and Broken Shackles district specializations.
• Fixed farming colony designation not applying to agri-drones.
• Bio-Repurposing tradition now provides the nomadic effects for nomadic necromancers instead of the necromancer effects.
• Brought the cost and upkeep of the Nanite Hub waystation module in line with the equivalent starbase building.
• Fixed the Realign Shields decision not recognising some pulsar systems.
• Living and Grid Amalgamated species now have bespoke living standards so they don't use consumer goods.
• Fixed Astro Harvester job modifiers not applying in some cases.
• Harvesting a celestial body that has no deposit no longer incurs a diplomatic opinion penalty.
• The Creativity Exhibition Vault now boosts Cruise Passengers for Forever Cruise empires, instead of applying its bonus to Bio-Trophies they do not have.
• Buildings that can be built on a planet or its orbital ring (Psi Corps, Planetary Shield Generator, Galactic Stock Exchange, Embassy, Noble Estates, Slave Processing Facility) can no longer be built as both a colony building and an Arkship starbase building at the same time.
• The Galactic Stock Exchange can no longer be built on both a planet and its orbital ring at the same time.
• Fixed pops sometimes being stuck in the Assimilation citizenship or stratum.
• Pops that already have the cybernetic or psionic trait are no longer flagged for assimilation they do not need.
• Negative arkship modifiers from Grand Refurbishment and Operational Checklist are removed when another empire conquers the arkship, so you aren't stuck with a bunch of negative modifiers and no way to remove them.
• Arkship can now issue a survey command by clicking the survey button and clicking on the system in galaxy map
• Fixed the tooltip information where the survey single planet vs surveying the whole system information was mixed up
• Fixed Waystations, Arkships and modded starbases that have forced components from starbase modules and buildings regressing their designs and losing components.
• If you are too slow and don't stop the Khan Aspirant from becoming the Khan they now properly despawn, avoiding a scenario where there are two Khans.
• If you play with 0 marauders enabled and as a Heirs of the Khan empire, then the backup Marauder empire will avoid Fallen Empire systems so that they don't get killed in the first few weeks, making you the Khan while others are still figuring out Blue Lasers.
• Fixed a crash when updating waystation networks
• Ranger Lodge now correctly informs that Biologists are converted into Rangers, instead of saying Rangers are converted into Rangers
• Arkship construction notification now mentions an arkship, not a starbase
• Missions counters can now be infinite
• Fixed missing localization for message descriptions
• Fixed the End-Bringers' shrouded world failing to spawn in games featuring Nomadic empires.
• Fixed Arkships unintentionally syncing to the same auto-generated design. Building or upgrading one Arkship will no longer sometimes overwrite armaments or utilities on others of the same type.
• Fleets that are repairing or upgrading now correctly sync their FTL, Jump Drive, and Catapult actions.
• Fixed an issue with generated empire adjectives.
• Inetian trader special project bound to planet, meaning that if your science ship were to blow up you can still progress
• "Secrets of the Past" event from "Biomorphosis" Ascension Situation blocked for Nomads
• Harvest Resources Contracts will now be cancelled if a different empire harvests the resources first.
• Nomads will no longer get double the benefit from their own resource producing megastructures. Megastructures will no longer be giving resources directly and a waystation will always be needed to collect those resources.
• Planets can now be bombarded during first contact war
• Contact view now properly closes if diplomacy window is opened
• Fixed some megastructure effects showing incorrect modifier icons and “+100%”.
• Rogue Servitors can no longer take a machine species as their secondary species when playing as a Forever Cruise. The machine can not be pampered.
• (Beta only) Increased the Shrinkspace Depot and Extra-Dimensional Depot effects on Operation Reserves from 500 to 2500 and 1000 to 5000.
• Pops can now migrate from Arkships
• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires with machine passengers start with the Machine Assembly Plants building
• Hive Mind Forever Cruise empires start with the passenger Population Controls set to No, which allows the species to grow or be assembled
• When starting a new game as a Forever Cruise Origin, crew species will correctly get assigned "cruise_founding_crew" flag. Various effects depends on it being set properly.
• Fixed custom empires set to Force Spawn not spawning when using certain portraits.
• Fixed custom Spawn Allowed empires with DLC portraits being excluded from the random empire pool.
• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in the system to open the L-Gate
• Added tooltip saying that Nomadic Empires require a waystation in, or adjacent to, a system to exchange minor artifacts for precursor insight
• Added tooltip that highlights that resources need to be harvested with the Arkship in the "Arkship Readiness" situation
• Fixed Faculty of Archaeostudies Relic World bonus modifier
• Decreased font size in the Empire Creation setup so it would not overlap with the numbers
• Spelling error in the "Eager" trait description
• Fixed the food upkeep in Phototrophic trait not being disabled when the Radiotrophic trait is active
• Nomadic Hive Minds will no longer have access to the Evolutionary Predators decision make planets into hive worlds
• Fixed an issue where the Heirs of the Khan claimant could be wiped out by the raider fleets spawned from the same marauder. No infighting!
• You will no longer be told that your Khan died from old age when they are in fact immortal
• Fixes contracts that had no issuer correctly set
• Abort contracts if the issuer ceases to exist
• Pre-Sapient species are now allowed to leave Pre-Sapient strata after they have been uplifted.
• Fixed Nomadic empires being blocked from excavating their story-locked dig sites that sat in foreign owned systems.
• Fixed Arkships sometimes giving up on Surveying.
• Empire preview will correctly display forced spawned empires with certain restricted portraits.
• Fixed some buildings (e.g. Psi-Corps) being unbuildable on planets.
• Arkship habitability preference can now be applied by species modification if your empire is nomadic.
• Prospectorium description does not refers to scholarium description
• Bio-trophies now give 10 Political Power when playing as Rogue Servitor with the Forever Cruise Origin
• The anomaly “The Imitator” will no longer sometimes appear multiple times. The Imitator cannot be imitated.
• Removed the habitability requirement for the various Shore Leave internal Forever Cruise contracts.
• Machine Intelligence and Individualist Machine Forever Cruises with machine passengers now alternate assembly every month.
• Cruise crew and passengers no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation or Livestock living standards and slavery types.
• Species being assimilated no longer incorrectly assigned Grid Amalgamation living standard.
• Individualistic Machine Forever Cruise no longer gets an error from placing Robot Assembly Plants at game start.
• Species being integrated are no longer eligible for assembly.
• The Package Deal living standard in Forever Cruise now grants political power to employed Economy Class Passengers.
• Added missing event sounds to the Forever Cruise situation
• Fixed megastructure overclock buttons being unresponsive.
• Fixed several Cosmic Storms anomalies appearing more than once per game when they should be unique.
• Fixed Stellar Cannon opinion modifier overflow
• The Build Waystation contract is now longer automatically abandoned for players when at double station capacity, only for AI nomads
• Joining an ongoing war is now considered offensive from the perspective of subject agreement terms, regardless of which side is joined
• Fixed ships that are waiting to be killed being counted for ship size-specific caps and special project requirements.
• Permanent Employment in Forever Cruise now only zombifies the crew, not the passengers
• Fixed issues when dismantling Beastports on Arkships.
• Added the bottom border line to the research dropdown in the top Resource Bar
• Reduced the Consumer Good upkeep of First Class Passenger Mandatory Pampering to 1 (from 1.5) for Rogue Servitors, matching the living standard's description.
• Fix waylines persisting on galaxy map after waystation removal

AI​

• Fixed AI being disabled after a resync in MP.
• The AI will now once again assign leaders to sector capitals as well as newly built arkships.
• Fixed AI not handling events if they don't have an idle science ship with a leader.

UI/UX​

• The Operational Reserves situation now shows its capacity breakdown and stored/total readout in the Situation Log instead of an empty Finisher Effects panel.
• The Operational Reserves topbar tooltip now shows a predicted monthly change with per-resource Energy and Minerals contributions, each with a resource icon and coloured +/- value, and a Hold-ALT hint to expand the produced/consumed breakdown.
• When enabling nomads in empire creation, the civilian arkship is now selected by default.
• Arkships no longer show false clearable-blocker icons in the outliner.
• Fixed incorrect Arkship button texts in the planet view.
• Anomaly window now also shows the name of the anomaly
• Fixed a target visibility bug when switching between situation log entries.
• Fix Remove Contract button hover hitbox in Situation Log
• Science Ships, Construction Ships, and Nomad fleets now share one automation settings window, with options nested under each action in a scrollable list.
• The automation settings window now groups actions into collapsible categories, with Survey nested under Exploration so you can automate exploring with or without surveying, and adds a Reset button that restores a fleet's default automation settings.
• In species trait tooltips in empire creation, the portrait requirements are now listed in the correct order.
• Fixed too large hitboxes for overclocking buttons.

Performance​

• Fixed science ship Excavate and Astral Rift automation causing a recurring daily stutter when no reachable target was available.
• Reduced the CPU and memory overhead of per-fleet order checks, improving performance in large late-game galaxies with many fleets.

Stability​

• Added some safeguards to avoid crashing related to pop groups.

Modding​

• Situations can define total_progress with per-stage section_weight for progress bars whose length and stage bands scale at runtime, with auto-generated _max_progress_add/_mult country modifiers and a situation_progress_percent trigger.
• Situations, stages, and approaches support custom_tooltip and custom_tooltip_with_modifiers (replacing the approach-only active_tooltip), and situations can override their Situation Log Active Effects and Finisher Effects panel titles and bodies.
• Added the orbital_ring_and_arkship_equivalent_absent scripted trigger.
• Starbase modules now also support `scripted_effect_cooldown`, `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag`, and `scripted_effect_cooldown_flag_desc`
• <id> and <event_chain> are now optional for is_point_of_interest.
• Scripted actions support a new automation = {} block with an options sub-block, plus a new fleet-scoped has_automation_flag trigger to gate automation weights.
• Scripted action automation = {} blocks now support a parent field that nests an action's row beneath another action in the settings menu.
• Added home_colony and background_colony scopes (similar to home_planet and background_planet, but scope to a colony on any carrier type).

Thank you for playing Stellaris!