Patch notes for Diplomacy Patch #1 (V0.8.4.0, Build ID: 744867)
We deployed part of the diplomacy feature in V0.8.3.7 on Tuesday, and I'm glad to report that the remainder of Diplomacy Patch #1 has now been deployed. This includes most of the UI and the core diplomacy systems. We're now jumping into Diplomacy Patch #2, which is scheduled for next Friday 28th August and will contain Strategic Resources, Diplomatic Advisors, Counter-Offer AI, and Race Leader Types. For more details see the Diplomacy plan blog post.
Major Features:
Diplomacy Screen: The diplomacy screen has been overhauled with new visual effects and race music, which helps give each race its own unique style and lends immersion to our stylistic 2D artwork. We’ve also added the new visual effects and music to the New Game screen so you can check them all out when selecting your race.Diplomacy Dropdown: The drop-down menu for Diplomacy has been implemented. This gives you a list of all the races in the game (with those you haven't met grayed out) and a favour meter showing how much each one likes you. It also has a button to open diplomatic contact with that race. At the bottom is a reslationship web showing what each race thinks of the others, and whether they have a formal Peace Treaty, Alliance Pact, or are at War. Clicking on each of the race hexes will show only the lines for that race. You can also determine the aggressor in a war by clicking on each side -- One side will show the War line and the other will just show their favour.Better First Contact: The First Contact event is no longer just a popup notification. We've improved it with a more Master of Orion feel by opening the diplomacy screen and showing you the race’s first greeting. The tone of your first contact will depend on who made the contact; If one of your warships entered the other race’s sensor range, for example, they may greet with you with extreme caution. Having the First Contact Policy technology will improve your first contact, and having an ambassador ship in the fleet will give you a big bonus to initial impressions.Diplomacy AI / Favour System: The enemy races can now look at your offers and decide whether they’re worth taking using a simple AI. We've also built in a Favour scale that runs from 0 to 100 and goes up if you offer fair deals or down if you offer a poor deal (even if they begrudgingly accept it). We have placeholder text for all the various circumstances that will be fileld out in the next patch (next week). The AI will also tire of repeated contact and will cut off diplomatic contact for 3 turns if you constantly badger it with poor offers or demands.Treaty: Technology / Money Trading: You can offer money and technologies to a deal and request any technologies from the other race that you don't have.
Treaty: Research: Research treaties grant each race bonus RP/turn equal to 1% of the other's total RP/turn, increasing by 1% every 25 turns up to a maximum of 6%.
Treaty: Trade: Trade Pacts grant each race 0.5BC/turn for each star system owned by the other race, increasing by 0.5BC every 50 turns up to a maximum of 1.5BC. Star systems shared by both races grant double the money.
Treaty: Alliance: Literally just a visual thing right now. This will be used by the War AI in a future patch.
Treaty: Peace: A Peace treaty is an agreement for each race not to attack the other race, like the non-aggression pact in MOO2. It will also automatically end a war if accepted.
Treaty: Sensors: Share your sensor data with the other race, opening their space for travel and vice versa. Also shows each race ships and temporal rifts (untested) in the other race's space.Minor Features:
Technology Changes: We've added the various treaties as Sociology technologies at the start of the first contact era. As a result, we've re-jiggled the trees around and made a few changes. We've removed the Commerce Station and Work Programme technologies and replaced them with a few new ones. Energy Freighters and Passenger Freighters allow you to use trade routes to send energy or colonists, which we think is a good strategic choice. We've also added two new technologies (Middle Management and Survival Pods) in anticipation of the addition of Planet Leaders and Ship Captains, and added Security Stations to the tech tree.Bugs fixed / small changes:
The Energy Market building now produces half the money. We intend to do a full balance pass on the market buildings and energy generation in a future update, but for now this was the most obvious change to be made.
Crashed Ships and Ancient Ruins now only give their 100% bonus until excavated, and are then replaced with either a Research Museum or Research Scrapyard that provides a 50% bonus.
Ancient Ruins that yield an Ancient building will also now continue to provide the 50% research boost in addition to their new function.
If you demolish an ancient building, museum or scrapyard, you will no longer be able to rebuild an Artifact Excavation on top of the deposit again to get the 100% bonus back.
The dropdown menu button graphics that disappeared in the last update have been fixed
Fixed a cause of memory leaks and crashes caused by Quad objects.
Fixed a cause of memory leaks and crashes involving the planet reloading graphics objects every time you switch planet to one with a different size. The graphics in question are now pre-cached for all planet sizes.
Changed how scaffolding works under the hood to be more efficient. All small/large buildings now share the same scaffolding object.
Removed Freighters from various parts of the game. This feature was cancelled but the ships could still sometimes show up in your design list.
Molten and Toxic planets can no longer be instantly terraformed via the Services tab. This feature is meant to be reserved for organic planets, with the Genesis Device coming later in development for molten and toxic worlds.
The city grid should no longer be pushed slightly offscreen when running in resolutions other than 1920x1080. Feedback on whether this has worked would be appreciated.
Put in some of the ground work for our upcoming buildings model release. Tested a batch of the buildings successfully in the game engine!
The AI will no longer consider non-combat ships to be threatening simply because they have shields and armour. Ships must have weapons to be considered a threat.There may be other small changes and bug fixes that are not in the list above.
Cheers,
-- Brendan, Lead Developer