Hey all,

I have been posting my changelogs on Twitter, but that may not be enough visibility. Going forward, I’ll also be posting them here as blog posts so that they are more accessible. Without further ado… a list of all changelogs since .7.0.0!

.7.0.0

Changes and fixes

• Completely updated UI – updated elements, fonts, and tooltips
  • New font for clarity
  • Increased size of many elements and fonts
  • Universal color scheme
  • Added economic summary window that shows among other things how close the empire is to insolvency and whether your House’s purse will make up any shortfall. If it can’t, and the Empire goes bankrupt, you will be forced out of office and exiled or killed – in other words, game over.
  • Changed layout of planet mode – now summary panels are on the left, allowing more room to see planet graphics
  • Added expanded information for trades, production, and build times on Economic Mode
  • Added expanded information for active Projects including target of Project and ETA (given no issues!)
  • Added new Demographic panel that shows several values of performance for each Pop class like unrest, happiness, etc.
  • New art – new character models, replaced old models
  • All planets are now 3D, several different models for variety and looks
  • Added Planet Demographic panel with breakdown of Pops job, statuses, and happiness
  • Added new House emblems and Civ emblems
  • Added Audience window for upcoming Character requests to speak with you and/or tell you something personal
  • Added many more choices for player House emblem, and it updates (along with House color) in the game
  • Added new Icons for Relationships between Houses
  • Added House tool tip for easier dynamic information about Houses when you are looking at Characters, etc.
• Changed the way initial Relationships between Houses are done – now no relationship can start below ‘Cold War’ and be better than ‘Friends’
• Added more Actions to facilitate working with Characters who would refuse to work with you any other way, including exiling them!
• Added first stages of Xyl mechanic – they are the alien invaders that drove humans from Earth 1,000 years ago. Currently the new UI elements shows how many turns until the Xyl’s final attack happens and the rough estimate of the power of the attack. There will be a check at the end of the last turn vis a vis your Empire’s power vs the Xyl, and may the best man – or alien – win! (This will be a much more fleshed out mechanic over the later versions)
• Added numerous House Actions that are only applicable to the House Leader to help influence the House relationships
• Added the concept of Emperor Reputation. Basically, you (the Emperor) has a separate Reputation with each House that helps determine whether a check is required to decrease the relationship type. All Projects and Actions affect this reputation, and they have knock-on effects (so that if you help a House that is in a war with other Houses or have poor relations, they will be unhappy and it will be reflected in your reputation) Reputation normalizes over time back to 0 if no actions are taken, faster for positive reputation than for negative.
• Expanded trade hub effect areas – this should make it easier to create contiguous trade zones
• Added many more conversations to the conversation engine so there should be more rich and varied responses from your Characters when you interact with them
• Added Economic Budget System
  • You will have 5 ‘sliders’ that you can change at the start of each year for free, as well as change the Imperial Tax and the Holding Taxes.
  • Development – increases the standard of living on planets and generally increases Happiness and lowers Unrest
  • Military – will be used to build and maintain space and ground military forces, no effect in this build
  • Intel – used to build and maintain Inquisitors and Intel networks
  • Science – used to maintain Academies that you control
  • Diplomacy – used as a ‘pool’ that can be used to bribe or gift Houses/Civilizations
  • Added Tax Change slider – you can now change the Holding tax and the various Governor taxes once per year.
• Added House Diplomacy System
  • House Diplomacy with the Empire is now governed by 7 diplomatic states: Peace/Neutral, Cold War, Limited War, Total War, Friends, Allies, and Subject Houses.
  • House Attitudes are now: Friendly, Cooperative, Neutral, Mistrustful, and Hate. This should simplify the House states somewhat and create a delineation between how a House currently feels about the Empire and their actual diplomatic state, which may be different than how they feel.
• Removed Characters from selection screens who refuse to work with you (have the ‘no’ symbol on their picture)
• Added Strategic AI for Houses
  • They can now use Projects, colonize, and build outposts, starbases, trade hubs, etc.
  • They follow the same rules that your emperor does – they must use their own House resources, they need Administrators and contributors to their own projects, and they use their own financial resources (their own people do not pay, but they use their House treasuries to pay for Projects).
  • So far Houses only have 3 ‘ultimate’ strategies – power, wealth and expansion, but more will be added over time.
  • Ultimate Goal States are heavily influenced by House Leader traits and stats, their relative power in the Empire, and their House ‘DNA’ (historical actions and strengths)
  • Specific Character AI will be added in future updates
  • Tweaked Viceroy AI to better support high-level plans from Houses to more properly develop their Holdings per their House’s wishes/needs
  • Added UI support to show what a House’s current top-level goal and current strategy is. Note that once the Intel system is implemented you will have to develop Intel to discover this information
• Added Riot check to planets that have unrest above 50% – will cause Pops to stop working, GPP to drop, and eventually facilities to be destroyed if the riots are not brought under control
  • Added 2 new Actions related to Riots: Meet Rioter Demands (costs a lot of credits and basic materials, you will gain Love and lose Fear on that planet, people will generally be happy for a while and Break Rioters Will (basically executes several Pops that are responsible for Riots, will greatly increase Fear and drop Love throughout your Empire, and your Houses will ALL sustain a drop in relations (except for Spartan cultures; they’ll approve)
  • Each Pop that can riot is checked – some may, some may not, but the check will not start until < 50% unrest takes hold (people feel there is enough background unrest and issues to start making their feelings felt violently)
• Added a few Projects, mainly for riot control, and took a few away that weren’t working properly
• Added exciting new Project – Initiate Orbital Kinetic Strike! Found in Military Projects in the Planet View:
  • Will damage planet – will hit 2-3 random populated Regions and damage the Infrastructure, and reduce sectors as well as killing Pops in those Regions
  • You will take a serious Reputation loss with the holding House, as well as any Houses allied to that House
  • Your Fear will skyrocket
  • Your Love will nosedive
  • Any Riots on the planet will end VERY quickly
  • Fear will increase in that system somewhat, and across the Empire less (think Death Star effect)
• When giving a Holding to another House, also removed existing Viceroy and replaced with a Character from the new owning House
• Changed algorithm to draw planets more consistently spaced and sized across multiple larger resolutions in System mode
• Fixed an issue where the system view star would draw across inner planets when zoomed in
• Increased zoom performance and increased speed in general
• Greatly decreased turn speed (average time between turns now 10-15 seconds)
• Fixed all existing Action conversation trees and now characters should respond appropriately
• Changed Action response algorithms and now characters should be much more likely to respond to Action requests in line with their current relationship with you, unless they have a very high Honor and that House hates you.
• Changed algorithm for ‘will not serve’ to greatly decrease the likelihood that they will not serve if they are friends (should be virtually 0 unless their House hates you and they have a very high Honor) and allies should be similar
• Fixed an issue where Projects that were ‘sent’ to other planets (probes, colonizing fleets, etc.) were being treated as though the administrator was actually traveling to that planet. Made 2 important changes:
  • For fleet/probe based actions where the administrator would not physically ‘be there’ they no longer have a travel time
  • Instead, a ‘fleet arrival time’ is used. Fleets move much faster than civilian transports, about 3 times faster, so Projects that are interstellar/fleet-based should be treated much more sensibly now
• Changed ‘groveling’ Action response algorithms to virtually always accept unless the character is much more powerful than you AND they are at Vendetta with you
• Ensured that all Houses would have at least one Holding
• Removed Common Houses – they added nothing to the gameplay but overhead
• Fixed trade algorithm to allow planets to trade at a negative GPP to fulfill needs (but obviously that means that other planets will have to be profitable to keep the Empire in the green)
• Lowered prices across the board and reduced fuel costs to allow for more trades
• Activated ‘culture and idea’ migration – now Pops will take a planet’s dominant culture into account depending on the strength of their Ideas
• Activated ‘Authoritarianism’ Idea – Pops and Cultures who score high in this Idea are more drawn to and like Viceroys/Governors with high Administration skill and have issues with weak leaders. More Idea effects will be added as the game progresses
• Balanced economic model to take higher ADL into account – there is now more incentive to build planets with higher levels of Pops (academics, fluxmen, administrators, merchants)
• Fixed issue where some Character screens loaded incorrectly (primarily House Leaders)
• Fixed several issues with the Trade algorithm – trades should happen more often (and take less time to process)

Fixed lots and lots and lots of other smaller bugs

 

AotSS Changelog .7.0.1

Additions

• News screen added on main menu, showing game news, updates, and hyperlinks to various help utilities
• Added main menu screen in-game – currently functional: new game, quit game, return to game – new game code now in place for future load game system
• Added player House Icon in place of generic House Info button

Changes/balance

• Decreased turn generation pre-game to 3 turns
• Increased size of small and medium quadrants to assist in ensuring a stable empire is generated
• Increased popular support maluses to make the starting Popular Support trend slightly negative initially in most cases so that the player will have something to focus on right away
• Increased starting material stockpiles for player House so that more can be accomplished early in game

Bug fixes

• • • • • Static (sprite) objects no longer rotate 90 degrees when zoomed into planet view
        • All Enum states are now formatted correctly (e.g. planet types, character types)
        • On the finance planet view, character revenue allocations now refresh upon opening of mode
        • Crash when production resources go negative has been fixed – now if you have insufficient materials to generate a ‘production run’ of build points, that material will not generate until there are enough materials to produce BPs equal to your overdrive
        • Removed Change buttons on Emperor screen on new game setup
        • Fixed all incorrect/missing tooltips on Character screen
        • Fixed issue where no characters were being generated during game setup, generally with smaller quadrants/empires

 

7.0.3 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• (Finally) added save and load capability! You can save a game (hot save only) in the options menu in-game and load a game from either that same menu or from the main screen.
• Added button disablers to prevent attempting to load a nonexistent game. Once you have a save game, the load buttons will be active.
• Known issues with load:
  • Trade hubs will not always generate – they will generate next turn
  • The physical ships will not load – they are representative anyway but will require a rewrite of the trade generation system to have initialize in a load game. I will do that but not this round
  • Save games are very large (~170 MB). While not an issue per se I would like to make them smaller to help with portability and load times.
  • No known issues with save at this time – the game will look like it’s frozen up but it’s working – I’m working on more graphic feedback on this process for next update
• Grand Vizier Screen – this is sort of a monthly update/winning screen that will do the following monthly:
  • Give you some broad advice depending on your situation
  • Show you progress towards winning/losing conditions
  • Give you a set of goals to pursue based on your situation (always optional, but helpful for some direction)
  • Give you some potential issues in your empire
  • Accessible from the button bar on the top left, with the Grand Vizier picture button
• Added remaining functionality for economic screen
  • Sliders to set your budget at the start of the year are now active. The button will ‘lock in’ your selections and be active if it is time to change your budget, otherwise it will show remaining months until you can change
  • You can now change your Holding tax. This can be changed whenever you like but it will cost you 20 Power to do so. This represents the percentage of GPP that Houses give you from their Holdings that count towards the yearly GPP projection.
• Massively increased frame rate by optimizing graphics on galaxy map
  • Increase is 20-40 FPS in some cases, large quadrants might still be a little slow but should still be 40+ FPS on a good computer

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added a few more portraits
• Added number of available fleets on the planetary trade box
• Tweaked balance on setup. All Small quadrants have 80 stars, all Medium quadrants have 120 stars, and all Large quadrants have 160 stars. Also adjusted minimum distance between constellations, this should help allow more exploratory gameplay
• Changed scale of UI windows to make them slightly smaller (should fit better on smaller monitors)

BUG FIXES

• • • • • Fixed major bug that would generate stars ‘lost’ in space that seemed to be attached to a nearby constellation
        • Fixed a few other generation issues
        • (Hopefully) fixed very rare bug where the game would not generate due to a duplicate key error when generating characters
        • Fixed a few text errors
        • Fixed runaway elastic-ness on intel screen when viewing planet list
        • Fixed issue where sometimes constellations would not show, causing stars not to show as well

 

7.0.4 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Change: Revamped Character Info screen in preparation for Intel/Secrets/Plot system
  • Added: Character Relationship Matrix (click on second button on side button tab to access)
    • Will allow you to see all relationships with all other characters in the game (for now; soon this will be tied into overall intel level – the more you know, the more relationships will be revealed)
    • Can filter by Rank – all or none. Soon add by House
  • Can now click directly onto a Character Card and it will open the Character Info screen for that character
  • Updated fonts and size to make things easier to read
  • Added Character Skills on Customer Info Screen
  • Added Intel required to see Character Skills – you will now need at least some intel to reveal character skills, one at a time, and Max Intel will always reveal all skills
• Added: Budget Slider Effects
  • Adding to Military Budget will increase the chance that a given Pop will decrease their Unrest each month, at a cost of Emperor Fear (they are being oppressed)
  • Adding to Domestic Budget will increase the chance that a given Pop will decrease their Unrest each month and increase their Planet Happiness, and their Emperor Love will increase
  • Military Unrest Suppression is 4X more effective than Domestic
  • Intel Budget will increase the chance that a given Character will have their Intel level increased each month by 1
  • Savings will add that percentage of the year-end GPP budget to your House treasury for use as needed
  • No effect yet for Reform
• Added: Change Holding Taxes
  • Costs 50 Power to do this, but you can do it anytime
  • If tax > 30%, Houses will start to accrue negative Emperor reputation; if tax < 20% Houses will accrue Positive
  • Affects what percentage of ‘tribute’ Houses give you from their Holdings, and contributes directly to the GEP.
• Added: Reputation/Rank effects to Relationship changes
  • Whenever you take an Action against a character, the effect that that Action has on your relationship with other characters is now modified by the Power and Rank of that character. In other words, people will be far less bothered with how you treat a Courtier than a System Governor, and the Action effects will be relative
• Added: House Relation Changes – now hooked up. Once your Emperor Reputation goes below -500, there is an increasing chance that a House will lower their relationship with your House by one level. When that happens, the Emperor Reputation will reset to 0.
• Added: 6 new Alerts – House Relations in Danger, House Relations Dropped, House Relations Improved, New Intel on Character, Population Suppressed, and Population Inspired.
• Added: 2 new Grand Vizier Goals, 2 new opportunities
• Added: Grand Vizier advice past the first month – it was somewhat of a bug where it wouldn’t advance past the opening month advice. Took time to add additional advice to the system.
• Added: Project: Relocate Province Hub – this Project will allow you to relocate an existing Hub for less than it would cost to build a new one. Will upset the former owners, but make the current ones happy.
• Added: Finance Prime info to Economic Screen – Shows portrait(which is clickable) and the overall economic effect the FP is having on your GEP. This is not actually installed (yet) but is planned for next build. You will have the ability to replace your Primes in the next build.

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• Tweaked balance where needed, now it generally is harder for Pops to maintain a high Love rating
• Upped costs on several Projects
• Made it clear on Outpost Project Help that the system where the Outpost is must be assigned to a Province (the province hub is where it sends its goods)
• Changed balance with reputation changes with Actions – now should not be so quick to change, also in line with new Rank/Power mechanic above

BUG FIXES

• • • • • Fixed major bug that would very rarely cause game to hang during game generation, related to updating character relationships
        • Fixed tooltip bug when you hovered over the Emperor on the COC bar
        • Fixed several logic issues related to how characters responded to your Actions – many times they reacted positively when you hurt one of their Friends or Allies, and vice versa; this behavior has been fixed
        • Fixed some odd issues with Projects where the ADM does not add correctly. Some of that is due to the Administrator and the relationships they have with the contributors but that’s not clearly notated on the Project form

 

7.1.0 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: Comprehensive Help System
  • Added 200+ tooltips that explain virtually every panel and concept in AotSS. Many of the tooltips have ‘expanded’ information that explain not just what the item/concept is, but how to change/adjust it, produce it, etc. Many more values are explained in AotSS now.
  • Added 15+ help screens on each panel and window (except for game setup; adding separate help for that next update) that explain what the panel does and how each control works – to activate the help, simply roll your mouse over the ‘i’ icon in the upper-left or upper-right corner of a window or panel
  • Added internal functionality for Grand Vizier advice on each screen – next few builds will add advice on concepts. As opposed to the ‘this is how to do something’, the GV will explain ‘this is why you should do something’. These will be accessed with a bubble chat icon on each window/panel.
  • Rewrote and expanded many existing tooltips as well to fit in with this system
  • Standardized tooltip orientation – all tooltips should more or less activate and show from the same corner
• Added: Viceroy Time In Position Modifier
  • It is unrealistic to think that you can just plop down a new leader and immediately you can triple a planet’s GPP. This new system will immediately cut the efficiency of the viceroy’s skills by a percentage – in the first few months it may be as low as 15-20%! It will gradually raise to 100% based on government skill and intelligence, and you can see this modifier on the planet screen in the viceroy window
  • Affects GPP and production currently.
• Added: UI Changes/Updates
  • Color coded several numbers to make them more readable and to understand what is ‘good’ in the game. Also, several layout changes to improve readability, including larger fonts in several areas and a revamp of the Project Screen to be clearer and cleaner
• Added Project: Remove Excess Infrastructure
  • This Project will allow you or a House to remove 50% of unused infrastructure from each Region of a planet. This is huge when you have a planet that has been losing Pops but is still paying a large infrastructure upkeep in materials and money.
• Added: End Turn Next Step functionality
  • The End Turn button will be red and will explain what you need to do to move to the next turn. Currently, it will tell you when you need to approve the yearly budget. Once you do what you need to do, the button will turn blue and you will be able to proceed.

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• Balance: Reduced APs at start of game, but no less than 2 per turn (so you can at least do 2 Actions or 1 Project). This creates more interesting choices early.
• Balance: Raised costs of many Projects and lowered others. For example, the Scout System Project cost more than the Survey System Project, even though you get more info with the Survey. Also lowered scout costs across the board to help the AI scout more effectively.
• Balance: Reduced the effect of Actions across the board and made it overall more difficult to change relationships with a single Action, unless it is a very powerful Action like a challenge, removal, or exile
• Balance: Rebalanced the planet generation values so that more ‘exotic’ planets like lava and toxic have very high values in materials or energy so there is some thought to putting outposts there, despite the bio. Also: super earths are now really super!
• Balance: Removed the ability to colonize and outpost gas/ice giants. This will be an ability that you can research later in the development of .7 with the Reform/Science system. Also removed the possibility of these being colonized at the start of the game (more of a bug than a feature)
• UI: Added available fleets to Trade Panel in Economic Command Mode.
• UI: Renamed ‘Average Development Level’ to ‘Planetary Development Level’. Makes more sense based on what it is.
• Intel: Changed the algorithm to make more checks for revealed skills based on the new level – higher levels get more checks. This should result in more revealed skills at higher levels
• Graphics: All planets should now rotate about their axis. Just a graphical thing, but it adds some life to the planets!
• Change: Changed the way the Planetary Development Level (formerly ADL) is calculated – now it uses staffed levels of development instead of total levels, representing pops that would be generating income (since they’re employed!)
• Change: New Emperors on their first turn will always have a one-time $500bc budget to use, regardless of their empire’s situation. This fixes issues where there is no budget at the start of the year, or too little to really make a difference, and fits the narrative that a new Emperor would have some sort of ability to influence things waiting for them.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed the non-working exit button at the main menu
• Fixed a long-running bug where you could have more employed Pops than total Pops, causing issues with production
• Fixed a bug where the end turn button didn’t work after the first year
• Fixed a bug where the budget was never available after the first year
• Fixed an issue where the province hub would not show on the map if the civ hub was also in that system
• Fixed a character generation issue where the House would be assigned prior to skill generation, so Intelligence would not factor into skills like it should.
• Fixed an issue where very few characters would show up in the character selection screen when you tried to replace or fire a character
• Fixed an issue where Neo-Sirius’s trade panel never showed up, as though it did not have a trade port in the system
• Fixed some wonkiness with GPP generation
• Fixed an issue where characters would react to an Action completely not what you would expect
• Fixed an issue where the planet claim procedure would claim terrible planets like gas and ice giants that had great traits that artificially brought the bio up to a minimum level, but were still terrible planets
• Fixed a rare but annoying bug that hung the game during galaxy generation – having to do with character relationships
• Fixed some misspellings in tooltips and cleaned up some wording to align with some new concepts
• Fixed most tooltip issues that result in ‘hanging tooltips’ where they don’t disappear no matter what – this results from a null data error. Working on a disposal routine to check for these whenever the graphics are refreshed and will be added to the next update
• Small performance increases

 

7.1.1 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: Expanded Option Button
  • Now you can adjust sound settings, or mute either the UI, music, or both
  • Added hooks to add graphic options in next update
• Added: Player House Tradition Selection
  • Added the ability to change your House’s tradition levels in 7 categories (Military Tradition is not yet used) This will allow you to more customize your House by setting specific strengths and weaknesses
  • 200 points can be allocated across 7 tradition categories in increments of 5 from a low of 5 to a high of 90
• Added: Alert Bar Severity Filter
  • 4 buttons can be toggled on/off to filter out levels of alert: Low, Medium, High, and Critical
  • Added hooks to add scope filter buttons in next update (Character, Planet, System, Province, Empire)
• Added: Additional Help Screens/Tooltips
  • Finished all side screens and most panels
  • Added tooltips to setup screens
• Added: Admin Ratio
  • This ratio determines a large part of the planet’s unrest level. A 100% ratio is one EMPLOYED average Government Pop at 50 skill for every 10 Pops. Below that, unrest increases. Above that, unrest decreases
  • Added the value on the Demographic Screen to track
• Changed: Claim System Project Functionality
  • The Claim System Project now is REQUIRED in order to build a colony in a system. You can’t just set up a colony in a far-flung world, you have to put in the political foundation to make sure that your claim and your properly is recognized.
  • Once you Claim a system, you can create a Colony Project there.
  • There can be any number of Houses that have a Claim on a system, but only certain Houses may build in a system. One House has the Primary Claim on a star system, and they control the system capital and the revenue cut that goes to the System Governor (typically 15% of a system’s revenues).
  • The Primary Claim House can (not yet, but soon) give a Colony Claim to a House that basically acts as a letter that allows that House to create one Colony in the system. This will be a major diplomatic boon that you can give to a House to help with diplomacy.
  • You can try to Claim a populated System, but know that this will usually drop your relationship level. If you are successful, you will have the Primary Claim on the system and you will own the system capital as a Holding. If you are not successful, you will have a loss of Power and a very pissed off House(s) to answer to. Only try to claim a System politically if you have a massive Holding imbalance, as a large part of the formula is the Planet Value sum of both Houses. Having 2 or 3 high-value Planets with significant development is worth more than 5 lumps of rock.
• Changed: Planet Value System
  • Planets now have an overall Value, that is used to calculate House Power, Claim Challenges, and Migration targets, among other things. You can now see this value in the Planet View in any Command Mode. It takes into account not only the planet size and type, but the development, Pops, skill level, and economy. Uninhabited planets still have a value but it will be much lower since it will be based on potential, not development.

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• UI: Cleaned up setup screens so that they flow better
• UI: Will not let you proceed in setup until you have entered all needed information

BUG FIXES

• Fixed (for reals) bug where you could not access budget in following year
• Fixed issue where you could not click on planet with a planet with rings next to it
• Fixed planets with rings rotating weirdly
• Fixed text error with next turn button
• Fixed issue where you could not select New Colony without the star being part of a province. You need that for an outpost, but not for a new colony (the colony will create a new province if it’s in a new constellation)
• Fixed some scaling issues with the Project Screen
• Fixed an insidious bug with Project Button generation that could occur if any House had a duplicate Project that they were trying to do – it would not always let you.

 

7.1.2 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: UI: Supply Network System View
  • This view is the default currently on the Economic Command Mode in Galaxy View. It will show at a glance the status of your supply network to move goods to your civ capital.
  • Works like a hub/spoke system – lines go from system trade hubs to province trade hubs to the civ trade hub. Wider lines are higher-level connections
  • 4 colors determine status of connection:
    • Green – good – trade hub is actively sending goods to their higher trade hub
    • Yellow – Viceroy is cautious – there are goods to send but the Viceroy on the planet has determined that they need the goods more on the planet
    • Orange – No goods to send – There are no goods to send through the trade network at this time
    • Red – Will not send – The system governor has interdicted all planets in this system from sending goods through the supply network
  • No line means there is no connection to the main supply network (e.g. not connected to a trade hub, no trade hub in the system)
• Added: Region Detailed Info Panel
  • Comes up as a popup panel on the Planet View in Overview Command Mode when you mouseover a given region
  • Shows a lot of information about the region under the tooltip, including the region mineral and bio values, the current/max population, unemployment, happiness, pop census, generated goods, and goods per pop.
  • Informational only; I used it to validate a lot of changes I made to the world generation process but you can use it to see in more detail what’s happening on your planets!
• Changed: Planet Initialization process
  • Rewrote the code to factor in each region’s strengths and weaknesses when adding facilities. For example, now in a mountain region, it will look to add mines much more than farms and admin (if any) while on plains and grasslands, farms will be much more common. This has the effect of better utilizing the planet and ensuring that facilities are put in the places where they would be the most effective
  • Pops will be better generated to take advantage of the existing infrastructure, so there should be a better ratio of Pops to relevant facilities
  • Lowered habitability across the board to reduce the number of Pops in the game, but your civ capital will still have almost 1 billion people (by design)
• Changed: Skill Adjustments for Characters in existing positions, especially Primes
  • In the previous build, Characters were selected randomly and assigned roles with no regard for skills. This was intentional to simulate a decadent Empire where cronyism has run rampant. In talking to some players, however, some of the characters border on inept which can severely cripple your Empire early in the game. I have mitigated this by giving some relevant bonuses to positioned Characters when they are assigned (for example, Finance Primes now have a 30-60 point bonus to Economic Skill, plus a small boost in Intelligence). This has resulted in better balance without creating elite ruling councils.
  • Viceroys and Governors also receive Intelligence boosts, which will improve their overall Skills
  • Higher chance for an additional Admin point (Admin skill is super important for skills because it represents the character’s ability to not only delegate their knowledge but propagate it through skillful government.
• Added: UI: House Claim Panel
  • Supporting last week’s changes to the Claim system, this panel is below the system information and shows all Houses who have a Claim on the system. The Primary Claim holder will still be on the right of the panel, but will also show in the Claim Panel.
• Changed: Relationship Generation
  • Changed system to now consider House relationship. Before, it would just take into account Culture, whether you were in the same House or at least the same Culture Ring, and certain matching Traits. This should result in less ‘island allies’ in Houses that you have a poor relationship with

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• UI: Added a few more tooltips, mainly for new additions in the last 2 versions
• Balance: Some reworking of Region values for Habitability and Minerals
• Balance: Reworked the production values for minerals and food – now more should generally be produced
• Balance: Lowered the mineral/energy values required for Projects across the board to allow the Houses to do more
• Balance: Increased speed of Supply Fleets and Trade Fleets slightly
• Balance: Mineral stockpiles on Planets are now adjusted to more accurately reflect the new facility placement system – in other words, Planets with more Mines will have more Materials, while Planets with more Farms will have more Food to start with and this will be more pronounced

BUG FIXES

• • • • • Fixed numerous issues with the trade system. Now all planets that should be able to participate in the supply network will do so. See the Supply Network System View for more information.
          • Fixed some trades not happening when they should have
          • Fixed some Viceroys not sending any trades when they should have
          • Fixed issue where even after a system governor had agreed to send goods, they would not do so
        • Fixed issue with Recruit Specific Pop Action – would not work properly for merchants – bonus was not being added. Will work now.
        • Fixed UI issues with Pop subsidy to recruit specific Pops – colors would not change properly across different selected planets on Migration Panel
        • Fixed issues with Outposts not initializing properly
        • Fixed rare bug where the galaxy would generate way too many Houses and Characters, causing a crash
        • Fixed issue where the Admin Bonus on Projects was not taken properly into account, causing major differences in estimated time to complete Project vs. actual time
        • Optimized Migration algorithm – it was using SortedList to do its thing, which is super slow relative to other options, so reworked it to use List and Dictionary and it should be faster now (turn times with 15 planets take about 15 seconds now)
        • Fixed issue with House AI where it would not consider other Houses in a system when making a claim.
        • Fixed issue with House AI where it could build a colony or outpost in another House’s Claimed system without permission
        • Added ability for House AI to consider relative worth of uninhabited systems when considering what to Claim. This should fix issues where a House claimed a more or less worthless system (no planets, only gas giants, etc)

 

7.2.0 Changelog Notes – WIP

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: Comm System
  • This is the start of what will eventually be the Intel System.
  • You will have comms from Characters that periodically appear in the Alert Bar (they are critical alerts) and you will have 3 turns to answer them before they disappear.
  • It costs 1 AP to answer (testing) and once you open a comm you can back out, but you can’t end the turn until you answer the Character! The comm button will turn red to remind you and the turn button will show red as well with the message (comm waiting)
  • If you have no APs, the button greys out to remind you that you have run out of time!
  • Currently, only House Leaders and Governors will generate comm requests – this will expand as the system grows
  • There are 2 types of comms: Requests and Demands. Requests are generally from friends and allies, while Demands are from Characters who have a poor opinion of you.
  • Demands will give a larger hit on the opposing character’s Trust and Grudge level, but giving in to a Demand will lower your Power.
  • Requests will only have a small hit if you can not do what they ask.
  • If the character is a House Leader, your Emperor Reputation will also suffer/benefit depending on your response
• Added: Reworked Designation Panel
  • Reworked the panel to be more clear and in line with the rest of the UI
• Changed: Star Sizes
  • Normalized the star sizes so that there wouldn’t be ‘tiny stars’ that were almost impossible to click on. There will still be star size variance but it has been normalized to be less extreme.

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• Added more tooltips
• Tweaked unrest so that it is easier to fix – currently it is difficult to come back from high unrest unless the people leave – this is sometimes hard to do on very nice planets where Pops otherwise have issues.
• Changed algorithm of House Claims to claim better systems
• Removed the Constellation scaling function. It was causing more issues than it was worth. Now all constellations are the same general size, but all stars are where they should be, as well as saved games will have consistency with star placement.
• UI: Made system panels smaller to be easier to see the bottom on smaller screens
• UI: Added alert to Project Screen when there is no ADM allocated – you will not be able to start the Project until you add at least 1 ADM. Previously, you could start a Project with no ADM, with bad consequences
• Sound: Removed the ‘static’ sound effect when you open the Character screen. Some people thought it was a bug.
• Performance: Greatly increased Planet View Economic Command Mode performance. Should see frame rates now in line with other modes
• UI: Increased the size of the Alerts so they are easier to read
• UI: Removed the dead space on the Project Bar where the Choose Project button was. Now active projects move up to fill the space
• UI: Updated the main screen – expanded the news panel to allow more room for news and re-centered the logo

BUG FIXES

• Fixed numerous issues with Project ADM. Several inconsistencies with not using the right travel type (Fleet or Administrator), not properly adding the travel time, not calculating the administrator effect properly, and causing projects to be much shorter in time than otherwise should be. There should now be consistency with the estimated time and what the time actually is in the Project Bar
• Fixed long-standing issue with Projects taking essentially infinity to complete, caused by ADM being calculated incorrectly on the Project Screen
• Fixed bug where you could not level up Starbases and Logistical Stations
• Fixed bug where you could assign a system to a Province when it was already assigned
• Fixed several draw logic issues that led to much faster frame rate at the planet level
• Fixed refresh issues that sometimes didn’t refresh the system and planet information panel on the bottom-center of the screen when changing to a new planet/system
• Fixed multiple bugs with comm system during test builds
• Removed a few obsolete Projects that no longer use current game mechanics, but were still available to select
• Fixed (hopefully!) rare hang bug where a turn never finishes fully generating, even though you can move around and do things
• Other small UI fixes

7.3.0 Changelog Notes – WIP

5.6.19

 

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: Monarch Rating
  • Your Emperor will now have a title, commiserate with their Power, Love, and Fear. There are 35 different titles that your Emperor can have. This doesn’t affect gameplay, but it is a cool step into the Emperor system that will be added in .8
• Action: Request House Favor. You can now ‘petition’ a Character from a certain House to speak favorably of your interests at their House court. The more powerful the Character and the more they like you, the more effective this will be, and you will see a positive reputation boost. Keep in mind that this will reduce your Power (emperors should not be seen to be groveling for help) and if you fail, you will take a negative reputation hit (and lose even more Power!)
• Added: Bypass Patch Check
  • If you can update your game, you will get a prompt to patch (Y/N). If you choose N, you can bypass the patch process and go straight to the game.
  • Fixed code that would continue to check for a patch when there was no internet connection.
• Added: Several UI improvements
  • Added more streamlined button selection, added more info on the Planet Info panel, streamlined the Economic Main Display on the planet view, and cleaned up several tooltips so they do not cover up the icons
  • Removed Emperor from System/Planet COC view in preparation for Emperor UI coming soon
• Changed: Major Optimization Changes
  • Now should consistently get 50-70 FPS on neutral computer on small or medium maps
  • Time to generate turn has dropped to 10-15 seconds on small maps; < 20 on medium maps
  • New game launch takes around 30 seconds now
  • Planet view in particular has been improved performance-wise

 

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• Added more Requests/Demands
• Added more AI modes for House
• Added more AP since you are starting to be able to do more, you will need more AP to effectively play the game.
• Increased output of factories
• Normalized starting relationships with characters – you will have fewer friends and allies, but also fewer vengeance and vendetta (should be almost none, really, since you’re kind of a blank slate)
• Added a debug window for the patcher to help track down any issues

 

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue where you could not fire or request all Primes to step down, now you can
• Fixed issue where Primes did not have the right tooltips, now they do
• Fixed issue where Primes had full access to Assignment Actions, now they have been reduced appropriately
• Fixed several issues where you should not have intel on planet, but could still see either value or ratings
• Fixed issue where panels would not update if you didn’t select a different planet
• Fixed issue where you could not see House Icons on character selection for certain Actions
• Fixed a few text formatting issues with Action responses

Other small fixes