Hey everyone!

Without further ado, here are the changelog notes from .7.5. A lot here!

7.5.0 Changelog Notes – WIP

7.18.19

MAJOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added: Spec Ops
  • You will now be able to ‘Prep Special Operations’ as a status once an Inquisitor has been assigned to a House or a Character. This will generate Spec Op points every month towards that target (either the Character or the House Leader)
  • Once you have at least the minimum number of points for a Spec Op (shown on the left in purple on the Action; greyed out until you have at least the minimum shown) you can take the Action at any time. You will have a chance of success (shown on the right of the Action button) that can go as high as 95% (always a chance of failure!) the higher above the minimum Spec Op points you go, the greater your chance of success (represents more planning)
  • Once you initiate a Spec Op, you will find out how it went the following turn as an Event: Success, Non-Critical Failure, or Critical Failure:
    • Success: the op happens as planned, and the desired action takes place. The squad reverts to Passive Intel status, and they gain a significant Spec OP XP
    • Non-Critical Failure: the op did not come off as planned, but the squad’s cover for whatever reason was not blown. You may have them try again next month (in which case you do not need to do anything) or you can change their status/mission. No adverse effects occur, just wasted time/prep. Squad gains a small amount of Spec Op XP
    • Critical Failure: the op failed, and very publically. Your Squad gets away, but is considered injured/damaged in the attempt and will be in Working Up status for 2-6 months. Significant repercussions will happen to you depending on the severity of the Ops (usually a huge hit from the Character’s House in negative rep, also an increase in Fear and Grudge.
  • There are no limits to how many Ops you may have going at one time – as long as you have a free Inquisitor squad, you can do one!

• Added: Character Fear Mechanic
  • Characters now have a fear level of you from 0-100, where 0 is absolutely fearless and 100 is terrified. This can be determined in very general terms, becoming more specific as you get more Intel Progress on a Character.
  • This effects how likely they are to agree to an Action, their speech/attitude towards you, how likely they are to Demand or Threaten something vs. Request or Favor, and how likely they are to join Plots against you.
  • Keep in mind that while a character with a high Fear level will be far more likely to do what you ask, they will more than likely hold a Grudge which never drops naturally, making them more likely to retaliate if they have an opportunity in the future.
  • Fear drops very slowly over time naturally, and can also be dropped quickly by positive Actions (getting to know Character, making a positive Speech, lending your Support, and promoting them to a higher Position)
  • When you start the game, since you are a young Emperor and widely ignored, most Characters will not Fear you very much. Doing Tyrannical things early in your reign is certainly a viable strategy as long as you can deal with the long-term repercussions!

• ADDED: Blackmail Mechanic
  • Blackmail is a special status that stays on a Character indefinitely. If you successfully complete the Spec Op ‘Blackmail Character’ they will have a special Blackmail Status. This means the following:
    • They will hate you virulently – their Grudge Level goes to 100
    • They will always agree with what Action you ask for, but the strength of the demand may ‘break’ the Blackmail hold. In other words, if you demand a Holding from a Blackmailed House Leader, they will agree – but asking such a strong thing will almost certainly ‘break’ the blackmail. If you ask for minor things that they might have agreed to anyway, it is very likely that they will stay blackmailed.
    • They will always serve – if they are in ‘Will Not Serve’ status, that will change, making them available for Projects and Offices
    • This status will not affect other Characters’ secondary effects (they aren’t going to tell their friends that they’re being blackmailed, after all!) but ONCE THE HOLD IS BROKEN, ALL Allies and Friends of the Character will have a Grudge and Fear rise of varying amounts depending on the Character and the closeness of the relationship!
  • Once a Character is blackmailed, you can voluntarily release the Blackmail through a Friendly Action. The Character will react much less violently than if they broke it themselves, but they will still not be happy with you, especially depending on the Actions they agreed to during the time of Blackmail.

• ADDED: Decision Score/Grand Vizier Feedback
  • You will now have significant feedback about whether to spend an AP (and live with the consequences) of asking a Character to do something. Depending on the Intel Progress level, you will have a range of what the Character’s Decision Score (DS) will be regarding the specific Action. Your Grand Vizier will give his opinion depending on the amount of Intel and the score range. Keep in mind that since you do not have exact intel, in close situations, your GV may say that it is more likely than not, but the opposite effect happens.
  • Also, the conversation will be color-coded for quick reference – Green = likely, Yellow – maybe, Red – probably not.

• ADDED: ‘Neutral’ answer possibility
  • Currently, there are only 2 possible answers when a Character responds: Positive (good results) and Negative (bad results). Now there is a ‘middle ground’ option where basically you didn’t really succeed or fail, but you got a non-answer. In other words, you won’t accomplish what you wanted, but you won’t get a negative effect, either, beyond wasting an AP point.

• ADDED: Assassination System Expansion
  • Now you can see your monthly Assassination Attempt chance right on the main UI by your Power. A few changes to this have been made:
    • This represents the monthly chance that an ATTEMPT will be made on your life by someone in the Empire. This does NOT take into effect Plots. Those are effectively unknown until/unless they are discovered.
    • At the end of each month, a D1000 roll is made against your assassination chance and if it is LOWER, then an assassination attempt will be made on the next turn. You will have the chance to spend AP for the month, but a random AP expenditure will ‘trigger’ the attempt and you will see the result on a pop-up screen. This can be anything from a missed attempt to an injury that lowers your AP for a few months to, yes, death. (though this is a very low chance)
    • If you don’t spend any AP points, the check is made when you hit ‘END TURN’. There is no escaping the assassination check once it has been rolled. It represents the fact that it will happen sometime that month, but it might happen at the beginning or the end of the month.
    • Factors lowering the check: Low Unrest on your planets, having a smaller Empire (the fewer people, the fewer nut jobs!), high Love, low Fear, being a Tyrant (having a higher Fear than Love), and having a positive GEP. Any of these factors in reverse will raise the chance. You can have a 0.0% chance if your factors are low enough.

 

MINOR ADDITIONS/CHANGES/BALANCE

• CHANGED: Spamming of Actions
  • You can no longer ‘spam’ the same Action multiple times in a turn. Once you attempt an Action, you may not attempt it again that turn.

• CHANGED: Logistical Network Limits
  • Logistical networks can now only be built to Level III, but their overall area of effect is greater. In addition, there can only be one LN per system, and they can only be built as follows:
    • LN I – Can not be built on a new colony or outpost, must be an established colony or higher rank
    • LN II – Can only be built on a system capital or above
    • LN III – Can only be built on a province capital or civ capital
  • They also cost more per level to maintain. The idea is to limit the LN spam, and build them only when absolutely necessary to expand to another constellation.

• CHANGED: UI for Power
  • With your Power being so central to the game, the UI for the main screen has been adjusted to add your Assassination Chance, and your current Power is now shown prominently with your change up/down from last turn as an arrow.

• CHANGED: Economic Prime Tax Effectiveness
  • Now can only be 25% – 115% max.

• ADDED: New AI House Actions
  • Houses have been given additional Demands and Threats, and can now correctly build Logistical Stations. In addition, they better prioritize systems to claim.

• ADDED: ADM Tooltip
  • Now when you hover over an ADM value in the system or planet mode, you will get an expanded tooltip explaining how the ADM was generated for the planet and the bonuses/maluses affecting it.
• ADDED: New Relationship Types
  • Now, there are Patron and Protegee Relationships, as well as Hanger-On and Hung-Upon. These are essentially positive relationships, although the Hung-Upon character sees the Hanger-On as a junior partner in the relationship.
• ADDED: More Conversation Engine Tags
  • There are now over 250 lines of speech that Characters can say randomly during conversation, and additional speech has been added for the new relationships and the Blackmail mechanic.
• CHANGED: Intel Nexus UI
  • Cleaner and more iconography to make it easier to navigate the Inquisitor Info blocks.
• CHANGED: Made the Comm UI clearer – now it is explicit when a Character is issuing a Demand, a Threat, or a Request (color cues). Also added a reminder about the Power effect on the choice
• BALANCE: Made it harder to migrate – what was happening is any time there was an open job there would be a huge land rush and like 30 Pops would leave to try to get the one job, and 29 of them would be stuck on the new planet in the same situation
• BALANCE: Viceroys now weight less for ADM generation
• BALANCE: Government Complexes now produce 5 ADM instead of 4
• BALANCE: Factories generate 3 times more BP per level
• GRAPHIC: Made nebulae much lighter on the galaxy screen

BUG FIXES

• As a general note, there should now be no crash bugs or hangs with turns at this point.
• Save/Load now work again
• Fixed issue where after a load, the GEP wouldn’t calculate correctly from earlier versions
• Fixed all remaining tool tips bugs – wrote null catch code so it should cover any missing descriptions or icon names
• Fixed bug with graduations not being correct
• Fixed issue with conversations not always shedding their tags
• Fixed major issue where a planet with a bio below 50 would not generate hardly any pops, thus creating situations where Houses would have like 20 people
• Fixed all non-working Action responses
• Fixed format issue on Action response
• Fixed issue with Allied Power not showing up correctly in the Main Display – it was stuck to the same number
• Fixed issue with when trying to perform an Action on a System/Planet that had been attached to a Province, but had not yet been assigned a Governor, you would not have any choices for Project staffing
• Corrected Assassination formula
• Fixed issue where Fear was being calculated incorrectly
• Fixed issue where Comms were being treated as Demands when they should have been Requests, and vice versa