Update 1.1.0 -- Galactic Statecraft

Update 1.1.0 -- Galactic Statecraft

Diplomacy

• Denounce Alliance Decision: players can now decide to leave an alliance after one of its members declared a war. They go back to Cold War with all involved parties
• Coordination Tool: players in an alliance can now place “pings” directly on the galactic map to display their intentions (attack here, defend here). The AI is sensitive to these pings and also places its own pings
• Co-operative Protocol: players in an alliance can now sign this pact. It will provide a faction-specific bonus that scales over time at the cost of an Influence upkeep
• Chat:
  • Added an “Alliance” specific tab in the chat window
  • Whisper Improvement. The players can directly send whispers by clicking on the colored button representing a player near the end turn button

• Diplomatic Requests: players can now request the AI (and vice-versa) to do actions relating to a certain game context (“remove your trespassing fleets!”). The sending player will be able to react (choose a diplomatic option) in case the recipient refuses the request

Pressure

• Pressure inputs have been made explicit in the “leader card” tooltip (in main diplomacy screen)
• A term to generate pressure directly has been added (“Bureaucratic Imbroglio”)
• Demands now only have 2 levels (reduced from 3)
• “Demand terms” have been added; exotic actions available only for a level 2 Demand
• “Refusal Penalties” have been added: refusing a Demand will now apply the selected penalty to the recipient
• War pressure:
  • War Pressure is now different from Pressure graphically
  • War Pressure trend impact is now feedbacked in battle notifications

Constellation Control
A player who owns the most systems in a fully discovered constellation will now claim a FIDSI bonus for their empire
Empire Chronicles
Hall of fame to record all completed games, allowing to view the final scoreboard along with the victory cutscene
Space Battle
Space battle weapons, defenses and other variables have been tweaked in various ways following player feedback (see “Space Battle” section below for details)
Pirates

• Pirate Lairs: Pirates are no longer spawned by Minor Factions, but by Pirate Lairs which are occupying some neutral systems. Players can destroy these bases by ground battles (and have a chance to get some loot!)
• Minor Factions will now spawn their own fleets to protect their systems. These fleets are static and stay on the Minor Faction’s home system

Academy & the Heretic

• Orbiting the Lost Graves after completion of the Heretic's quest will now yield dust gain per turn if the Lost have won, and manpower per turn if they have lost
• Rewards have been increased for the winning camp's podium of participants
• Only the winning camp will be able to recruit Heroes after winning, through either the Academy or the Marketplace, depending on the outcome
• Visuals will change on Lost Graves depending on the outcome

Visuals

• Added new visuals: Orbiting space stations as a planet fills up and a system develops
• New icons for Privateers & Pirates
• Added destroyed planet visual in discovery cinematic
• Fixed planet colonization cutscene being displayed and frozen when a ground battle is viewed during the colonization cutscene
• Fixed anomalies remaining on screen when entering galaxy scanview
• Added new image for finished auto explore notification
• Changed the flow of the space battle cutscenes launch to fix an issue that appeared when trying to visualize a battle around a node affected by the Rip singularity
• All Minor Factions now have an image artwork in the "Select A Target Empire to Attack" screen

Bailiff

• The bailiff system will now first scrap ships before improvements
• Improved Influence bailiff system to take into account Co-operative Protocols (will not make players lose the game)

Space Battle

• Feedback Improvements:
  • Added new feedback elements (Flak DPS on Kinetics & Missile Health on Missiles)

• Weapon Balancing:
  • Complete rebalancing of weapons to create more interesting play:
    • Kinetics now have an accuracy of 10% / 50% / 85%, playing a role of missile counter and strong short range damage
    • Missiles now have an accuracy of 100% / 50% / 25%, strong long range damage that can take out most Energy ship designs
    • Lasers now have an accuracy of 50% / 100% / 50%, with good damage. They will tend to defeat Beams and Kinetics, but will have a problem against Missiles
    • Beams now have an accuracy of 100% / 100% / 100%, with standard damage overall. They are sure to hit and will counter Kinetics. Their accuracy makes them perfect to use with counter tactics, and their critical hits can turn the tide of battle in your favor
    • Buffed "Advanced MAGGIE Laser": Now has +100% Damage against Shields
    • Buffed "Advanced HELL Array Laser": Now has +100% Damage against Shields

• Defense Balancing:
  • Buffed: Medium Ships, Large Ships and Motherships have increased Health
  • Buffed: Doubled shields' absorption, Tripled shields' life

• Military Power Balancing
  • Defensive Military Power is now computed according to modules' values and should be more consistent
  • Manpower damage is now used to compute Offensive Military Power
  • Critical Hit Chance is now used to compute Offensive Military Power



• Squadrons
  • Squadron life updates correctly when hit
  • Fixed squadrons not damaging each other
  • Fixed Wing Coordination not working
  • Squadrons now target Arks

• Fixed auto ship design not working for Unfallen Explorer and Colonizer Hulls
• Second level of "Non-Liquid Assets" now applies its Hull Absorption bonus correctly
• Battle theater effects are now listed in the Special Node Discovery notification

Ground Battle

• Unlocked Bhagaba special ground battle play ("White flag": slower ownership recovery for invader)
• Reduced Tikanan "Swarming Infantry" assimilation trait from -0.5% to -0.15% manpower Infantry cost
• Reduced "Monstrous Opponents" assimilation trait from +75% infantry health to +15% infantry health and +15% infantry damage
• Rebalanced troop stats:
  • Infantry: Reduced damage from 20-40 to 12-22
  • Armor: Reduced damage from 40-60 to 25-60
  • Plane: Reduced damage from 140-180 to 95-115
  • Plane: Reduced health from 300 to 200
  • Plane: Reduced manpower cost from 30 to 20

• Lowered manpower generated from "Conscription" from 200 to 175
• You now need at least 2 pops to select "Conscription" when defending in a ground battle

Quests and events

• The "Acquire" objective of the Riftborn quest "A Plague on Coroz" cannot be completed by custom Riftborn factions using the "Shipbound" trait so this choice is no longer available in that case
• Added a Quest Marker on the pirate fleet of the Exploration Quest Dust to Dust: part 3
• The Good Life quest will now work if Horatio’s ship is docked to an outpost which has just turned into a Colony
• Players now need to participate in a multiplayer quest to obtain a reward
• Academy Quest 01 now has a new ending: if a player finds the Academy before the quest ends, then the quest doesn't fail but success and display a new ending outcome
• The Cravers Quest "then we cracked the nuts inside” now completes only after the system is captured
• The event Riled Researchers now starts from turn 60 instead of 20 to avoid the AI from making choices harmful to its economy
• A Swarm of Locusts now informs the users how many fleets they have to destroy in order to receive a reward
• New rewards have been added for Deeds
• The church triumphant Part 2 now displays the right building in the objective
• Fixed Horatio Quest Improvements not working for Custom Factions
• Unfallen Quest chapter 2 is now more Vodyani-friendly
• Ripple effect now fails only if another Empire destroys the Lesser Empire Fleet
• Chapter 3 of the UE Quest: the Mezari Objective now scales with the current science production
• Tweaked Quest appearance rhythm overall
• Dust to Dust now fails when another Empire or the Lesser Empire attacks and destroys the fleet
• The quest no longer fails in "The Good Life" Exploration Quest if the player disbands the Lost Horatio
• Use of similar Dust icons for the effects of "A Two-way Street" (Dust gain and Upkeep increased) event could be confusing that's why we now use the same icon (Dust gain and Dust loss)
• The Battlestations reward of the "Collaboration or Cataclysm" quest doesn't display a placeholder icon and category anymore
• First two parts of the "Fighters and Bombers" quest now display correctly their outcome text upon completion
• If the player used to play a custom Faction Horatio, the Horatio faction quest could be endless. It now checks if the original Horatio are in the Empire. If they aren't, then the Quest will end
• It is now the same for all the Population Quests: we check if the player has the original population instead of the Custom ones
• Lowered Minor Faction relation threshold to ask for a quest from 75 to 50
• Changed the cost of asking for a quest from an Influence cost to a Dust cost
• To validate the quest Riftborn Chapter 1 part 1: the player has to possess only 9 buildings, and the feedback now reflects it
• If the player discovered the galaxy thanks to a shared map in the Sophons Quest Chapter 1 (alternative version) Science choice, the quest wasn't completed. Now the quest can be completed even if the player is helped by someone
• In the Lumeris Quest Chapter 1 Science choice, if the player discovered the galaxy thanks to a shared map, the quest wasn't completed. Now if the player is helped by someone, the quest can be completed
• "Dominance" and "Acceleration" rewards of the "Collaboration or Cataclysm" quest have now have temporary tooltips, we'll had more descriptive tooltips later
• The correct choice is now selected upon confirming a multiple choice quest after the notification was minimized

Technologies

• Added a "Continuum Sculptors" faction-specific tag on "Climate Engineering" tech
• Increased “Free Move Sophon” movement points from 2 to 4
• Added "All must Tithe II" to the unique alternative technology in case of unique constellation setting
• Fixed Lumeris being able to have 5 Trading Companies
• Added new Stage 4 Engine
• Moved Luxury Lottery unlock to the Atmospheric Filtration technology (previously Neural Robotics)
• Fixed issues with Horatio ash and lava colonization unlocks
• The technology which allows to unlock Heroes on Marketplace is now displayed in the Tutorial
• Fixed the AI being able to trade quest technologies
• Arks will now need to unlock additional slots by unlocking stages in the tech tree
• Victory Wonder no longer appears in the construction queue before you unlock the stage
• Fixed bug where a custom faction with Riftborn pop and Horatio affinity didn't have access to Adamantian mining
• The Systems Illumination or Radiance are no longer given to players with Ship Bound or Unfallen Affinity
• The deeds are now greyed out when the technology stage is unlocked by the Oracle of Science law
• Fixed an issue where "Technology stage unlocked" notifications of Economy and Trade and Military quadrants displayed misleading information

Laws & Politics

• Reduced "Deadly Intent Bill" from 50% to 33% damage bonus (75% to 40% for Republics)
• Increased effect from "Trusted Broker" law from 2% to 3.5% per turn, up to 50% (from 30%)
• Added a passive bonus on Outpost growth (+10%/+15% in Republic) for the "New Colony Rule" law
• Updated the effect of the Republic version of the base militarist law for consistency
• Removed default bonus pressure to Religious politic
• The Attends resolution tooltip has been corrected
• "Jingoist Joy Bill" Law does not allow for free war declaration in truce anymore
• Changed/Fixed the way the tech to change government, Autocracy and the Cravers visual affinity interact: Autocracy is not linked to the Cravers affinity anymore
• Fixed Custom Factions with the Cravers visual affinity being unable to change their government type

Diplomacy

• Fixed diplomacy cost reduction for peaceful terms
• Cravers now require having Pacifists in the Senate in order to do diplomacy
• Removed system conversion diplomatic ability from alliances
• Made all resources available for trade in Cold War
• Removed vetos to accompany new “Denounce Alliance Decision” feature
• Lowered Alliance tech from stage 4 to stage 3 of Empire Development quadrant
• Added Co-operative Protocol tech to stage 4 of Empire Development quadrant
• Fixed force truce turn duration being 0 in Endless speed
• Fixed Truce tooltip
• Allowed Alliance members to trade systems among themselves
• Changed and added some texts for the diplomatic demands
• Entering cold war from truce with an alliance will no longer display multiple notifications one for each alliance member
• Users can no longer use the Praise action without the Off-World Agribusiness tech unlocked
• Changed close and open borders icon
• Fixed Diplomatic contract evaluation bar the first time a user click on suggest term
• Declaring war now cancels all restrictions (from contextual diplomacy) between the empires

Economy

• Reduced minor factions yields in Manpower
• Tweaked bonus values for Minor Factions relations
• Increased Essence gained from Hunting Grounds from 10 to 100 / turn
• Fixed Virtual Dustylizer Star System Improvement not being queueable
• Fixed "Interspecies Cooperative" not properly applying its bonus for Friendly relation
• Added system effects to Wonder victory obelisks
• Increased cost of Wonder victory obelisks in strategic resources
• Rebalanced Conquest Victory thresholds
• Increased the costs of Victory Technologies
• Increased adv strat cost of all improvements, wonders and quest improvements
• "Luxury Lottery" improvement now does not unlock for Horatio (they only have their specific improvement)
• Constructing the "Zelevas Incarnate" improvement while having "Harmonious Development" trait and 3rd threshold of the "Pacified Collection" bonus will no longer cause the game to remain stuck
• Fixed the registry formula for the Outpost Decolonization refund. The formula for the refund uses the same formula as the original cost, which takes into account the amount of colonies+outposts (which increases when you create the outpost, hence the refund being bigger than the original expense). Added offset to the formula to compensate
• Fixed an issue: vertical Culture was constructible even if the player did win the metaplot
• "High Gravity" and "Low Gravity" anomalies can no longer be on the same planet
• Approval system improvements now take the correct number of turns for their level
• Stopped Shipbound factions from exploiting the interaction between Praise and Leaching, and increased Relation penalty for Leaching
• Made Tiny Galaxies more compact: they should now contain 36 nodes rather than 24
• Fixed players being able to have both standard and faction-specific improvements on a system
• Industry costs of Riftborn populations now scale with game speed
• Arks health and manpower stock is now impacted by their system level
• Added prerequisite on hot planets to prevent the anomaly Ice-10 from spawning
• The "Capitalist Frenzy" infinite system improvement now replaces the "Public 3D Printing" infinite system improvement
• The "Capitalist Frenzy" infinite system improvement is no longer identical to the "Political Theater" infinite system improvemen
• Fixed "Fold Singularity": No longer gives negative dust if System Dust income is inferior to 0
• Fixed issue with count of Anomalies and Moons not being incremented correctly for laws and other improvements that use it
• The information displayed inside the system construction panel are now updated after singularities are removed
• When a fleet or system loses maximum manpower, the excess is given back to the empire
• The approval gained from terraforming a planet is now properly displayed
• "Federated Procurement Office" empire improvement reward from the "Preserver of Nations" Deed now has correct tooltip

Heroes

• Fixed Horatio Hero Starting Skill tooltip wrongly displaying +2 Food per Population when it was +1 Food per Population
• Virtual Endless Hero obtained through quests now appear at level 8 instead of 5
• Reduced "Enhanced Astronavigation" tier 2 hero skill from x3 to x2 Free movement speed

AI

• Changed: Warcount truce & declaration handling
• Changed: Retreat handling more accurate
• Changed: Fine tuning on negotiation evaluation
• Fixed: AI now more reactive in encounters
• Fixed: Fighter/bomber ship design tweak
• Fixed: The AI now uses ships in hangar with more efficiency
• Fixed: Issue in balance contract resource amount adjustment
• Fixed: Allocation problem on vine ship and leecher making the AI slow to respond
• Fixed: AI no longer creates many D.Star type ships equipped with Core Crackers causing performance issues in the later stages of the game
• Fixed: Several fleet behavior problems that could get AI fleets stuck
• Optimized AI speed
• Fixed: Issue with the maximum amount of resource during balance contract
• Fixed: Diplomatic infinite loop
• Fixed: Spam loop message blockade
• Added fix for Unfallen rooting

Multiplayer

• Fixed Multiplayer session desync due to inconsistency in the perceived DamagePerSecond element of a ship
• Fixed session desync due to inconsistency in the perceived hull plating element of a ship
• Fixed desync on trade route leaching values.
• Fixed desync on hot join after the United Empire outpost "Traitor's reach" was awarded
• Sending several leech fleet actions while lagging in multiplayer should no longer produce unwanted behavior
• Fixed UI error when host leaves in multiplayer
• Fixed a desync related to the "Tree of World" natural wonder

General & Misc

• Increased the size of the faction selection window and fixed the sort of the factions
• Added darker tone font colors when the background is yellow
• Changed Color of the Overpopulation Icon to better match the overpopulation gauge next to it
• Fixed an error occurring when 3 anomalies belong to a planet
• Fixed an assert generated when hovering the mouse cursor over the Virtual Dustylizer system improvement while having only Riftborn or custom Riftborn population units
• Fixed several errors caused by root action and contextual diplomacy
• Fixed fleets seeing things when they are forcefully moved
• Fixed non-depleted planet localization
• Fixed Content Citizens II having the same Custom Faction cost (10) as the first level
• Fixed an issue where the user would get stuck when quitting a session while a save file is generated
• Fixed some cases where systems could not be vined by Unfallen when around decaying systems
• Fixed Vodyani hunting grounds failing to destroy planetary improvements and thus remaining forever (or until someone else colonizes the system)
• Fixed an issue where using "." in a save game name could result in the save game not appearing
• Increased Unfallen Vine network range
• Fixed an issue where, on some resolutions, construction costs of ship designs Ship Design Edition Panel were overlapping
• The ship construction cost is now correctly updated after making changes to a ship design and using the "Reset Design" button
• Fixed save name containing [MODDING TOOLS] when trying to overwrite a save created with modding tools
• The tooltip of the Quick Start main menu button now displays some information about which settings it will use like the faction, the competitor count, the game speed and the game difficulty
• Fixed probes appearing at the center of the galaxy for a short period when using the launch probe action.
• Modified the web API in order to display the news sorted by date
• Forbid the player to Quit Game between turns to avoid some stuck situation
• Fixed Notification errors when releasing contextual diplomatic exchanges
• Fixed multiple planet tooltips in the Custom Faction Creation screen that displayed an unknown negative "on Planet" value
• Fixed selection issues with hangars and civilian ships
• G2G text is no longer clipped on error window
• The word "Valider" should not be cut off randomly in the game anymore
• Fixed Unknown result battle report notifications when accepting to watch a battle while already watching a previous battle
• Fix wormholes not appearing sometimes in twin elliptic galaxies
• Fixed Technology Hint tooltip on Reduce Anomaly Button on Planet Label in Management view
• Fixed Arks requiring industry to build in Slow & Endless difficulties
• Added a blink effect to the destroy button when the player can destroy a planet
• Fixed faction name cut-off in the minor faction tooltip
• The luxury resource tooltip in uncolonized systems is no longer out of bounds
• Fixed some highlighting issues during the "Into The Great Beyond" beginner tutorial
• "Gearing up" tutorial is now triggered only if the user has access to the military screen

We hope you enjoy this update. Let us know what you think!