Patch Notes for General Feature Patch #1 (V0.8.5.9, Build ID 764172)

Patch Notes for General Feature Patch #1 (V0.8.5.9, Build ID 764172)

This week's update adds a few of the major features we wanted to get in before starting work on the 3D ship designer:

Note: This patch is out a day late because we found a large number of bugs in the new features and spent a lot of time fixing them. We also have to push back the Race Stats feature for a few days as we're going to add a little more gameplay for the Aquatic and Robotic archetypes than originally planned. The schedule for the 3D ship designer remains unchanged, and it should deploy as expected on September 18th.

Major Feature: Wormholes:

When creating the map, you can now select whether or not to add wormholes to the game map. These connect several random star systems within 60-120ly of a race's home star systems and have a minimum distance based on map size, so you'll find they naturally connect an empire to those on the other side of the map. Ships can instantly travel either way through a wormhole.

Major Feature: 2D Maps:

We've added the ability to select between 2D and 3D map on the galaxy generation screen! The stars will still be roughly the same distance from each other but spread over a wider area to accomodate the lack of a third dimension, so the game should play roughly the same. Sensor ranges are still represented as spheres at the moment, but in a future update we'll be switching them to circles when you're playing in a 2D map.

Major Feature: Planet/System Specials:

Last week's patch added Strategic Resources like Helium-3 and Coffee Beans to one planet in each nebula and others spread throughout the galaxy. This patch expanded on that by making each of these part of a new Planet/System Special mechanic. We've also added several other specials:

Gold Deposits: Gold Deposits have been detected on a planet. Each gold deposit harvested by an Ore Refinery will produce 1BC/turn and increases the revenue from Trade Pacts signed with other races by a further 0.5BC/turn. The gold is contained within existing seams of Ore.

Ancient Civilization: An ancient civilization once inhabited a planet, but has long since died off. The remnants of several structures remain on the planet and can be excavated for a bonus to research and a chance of discovering a rare piece of ancient infrastructure.

Crashed Warship: The remains of a massive ancient warship have been found on a planet. The wreckage covers several hexes, each of which can be excavated as a separate Crashed Ship to provide a bonus to research on the planet and a chance of discovering ancient ship modules and weapons.

Space Debris: Debris from the battle with the Revenants is floating in space throughout the star system, which is salvaged immediately for some money.

Future updates will add more planet and system specials as the need arises. For example, when we add planet leaders and ship captains we'll also add the Stranded Leader special where you can rescue one from a planet. And when we add Space Monsters and Revenant Attacks, there'll be a few more surprises hidden in there.

Major Feature: Random Events

We've rolled out our highly moddable random events system that loads events from images and a human-readable text file in the game directory. You can specify a number of requirements for an event to be able to occur, such as there being a certain number of a certain building, infrastructure or deposit on the planet, the planet being a particular environment type, the planet's owner having or not having a particular technology, and the planet having above or below certain stats. Each event has three options for resolving it, which can cost metal and money as well as implement effects like destroying infrastructure or deposits, changing planet environment type, adding deposits, changing planet stats, killing population etc.

We've implemented a few random events so far with this framework, and there are more to come. This is the first wave of random events we're implementing so right now they're all disasters. We'll be adding more positive events in the future that let you pick between rewards or have other beneficial effects such as adding deposits to a planet or unlocking a technology.

Population Rioting: This can trigger if a planet's Security rating is below 80%. You can resolve it diplomatically by spending money, with force by executing 200 citizens, or ignore it and build more police stations to solve the security problem manually.

Crop Blight: This can trigger on any planet with food deposits and more than one farm. The options to resolve it are to dedicate all your empire's research to developing a new pesticide for 5 turns, to shut down all your farms for 3 turns and burn the affected crops, or to ignore it and let it ruin your planet's fertile soil.

Disease Outbreak: This can trigger if a planet's Health rating is below 95% and population is above 4,000. Your options to solve it are to dedicate your empire's research to finding a cure for 5 turns, use your security forces to kill anyone with the disease (20% of planet's population), or ignore the outbreak and it'll start killing 50 population per turn until you build enough hospitals to get the planet's health rating to 100%.

Acid Rain: This can trigger if you have fossil fuel power plants and farms on the same planet and don't have the Atmospheric Filter technology. The options to resolve this are to spend 8 turns of research redesigning your farms to withstand the acid rain, spend 250 BC replanting dead crops after the acid rain subsides, or ignore the rain and it will shut down your farms for 3 turns and wipe out some fertile soil.

Nuclear Meltdown: This can happen very rarely if you have a nuclear power plant on the planet. The options to handle this are to spend 500 BC safely shutting down the plant and disposing of the waste, to seal the plant up and get rid of it (killing all 350 staff and destroying the infrastructure), or to ignore it and let it go meltdown (the planet becomes toxic). If you have the Uranium Handling technology (formerly "Nuclear Waste Management"), the first option costs only 250 BC and the second option allows you to evacuate the staff before destroying the plant.

Other changes: