Star Dynasties update 0.9.15.0: Less random combat, system rebellions, and more

We're back with another big update that mostly tackles the game's balance and other important player requests. We heard your feedback regarding the combat rolls being a little too random, so we reduced the odds of massive swings from particularly lucky or unlucky rolls.

System rebellions have also been changed to be less random. Instead of having a per turn chance of rebellion, an unrest bar now accumulates in each system. When this bar is full, a system rebellion happens. This will allow you to more strategically use the Spread Dissent action on your enemies when they are close to the edge, and to crack down on unrest in your own systems and avoid rebellions at particularly nasty moments.

There's a lot more changes in store for you, but without further ado let's get into the patch notes proper.

Balancing

• Reduced the combat roll range to 10-40

• Reduced the frequency of illness

• It is now less dishonorable to declare war when defending a vassal duke if they are in a defensive war, being attacked on their capital, or being attacked in a system their faction claims

• It is now only dishonorable to refuse to defend a vassal duke if they are in a defensive war, being attacked on their capital, or being attacked in a system their faction claims

• A character is now less likely to make a demand on the basis of their own claim in scenarios that do not warrant it

• Rulers are now less likely to accept a request for submission or vassalage if they have recently declared war

• Other characters are now less likely to make the same request to you multiple times in a row

Population Unrest

• Population Rebellion Risk has been replaced by Population Unrest, which accumulates over time and triggers a system rebellion when it reaches a threshold. (NB: all colonies will start with zero unrest if you continue an existing pre-patch save)

• You can now Quell Unrest on any colony within your empire, pleasing that ruler. However, you no longer gain status.

• Quell Unrest is now an ongoing assignment, and has a per turn cost

Politics

• If your chosen replacement dies during the battle to depose a ruler, you now get to choose a new replacement immediately after the battle

• Fixed bug where a ruler was rebelling when they survived an immediate depose conflict, even if they had already broken away from their master during the combat buildup phase

• When the player was being asked to support an attacker while they still had surprise, the crime of a system rebellion or raid was being applied twice

• Fixed bug where sometimes a faction would gain a master claim on itself

• When a vassal duke declares independence as a result of your attempt to depose them, the morality of your act is now calculated correctly

• Added an update to clarify when a vassal is resisting an attempt to be deposed without outright rebelling

• When you annex a system and grant it to a vassal, you are now also doing them a favour

• You can now see how many turns are left before a war ends if there are no hostilities, in the tooltip of the war in the domain Military tab

• A baron arresting a visitor because a war has started between their faction and the faction of the visitor is not committing a crime

• The game now generates an update when a prisoner is transferred between two rulers

UI

• You can now move the map with WASD

• Added five new pieces of event artwork to the game

• You can disable links within decision choices from Options (they are still highlighted, but with a different color)

• Adding a toggle in the Family tab to filter down to the relatives of a character that are rulers

• Fixed intermittent bug where changing UI scaling would create temporary visual artifacts

• The suggestion to champion claims now focuses on the claimed entities

• Claim lists are now sorted so that dead factions are grouped together

• When showing you dishonor icons, the game will now show a balance icon for each moral act that has been balanced

• The Technology health modifiers and Medical Assignment modifiers are now shown as percentage modifiers of the base probability

• The base skill level (before modifiers) is now also shown on the skill tooltip when appropriate

Economy

• Clicking on the money indicator in the bottom toolbar now takes you to the accounts panel

• The Set Tax Level action was not showing how much your income would drop by when switch to lower levels of tax

• Fixed bug where some tax bonuses in the Accounts table where shown multiple times

General - Improvements

• When choosing a candidate for a marriage offer, the choice tooltip hints whether the offer will be accepted

• The game now uses 4 rolling autosaves

• The player is not shown the "house member has combat tactic" updates on the first turn

• It is no longer possible for any other house in the galaxy to use the same symbol as the player

• If one of the finalists in the tournament is injured before the final match, the other contestant is now considered the winner

• When invited to a feast, you now also get visibility of the feast's internal organizer

• Minor tweaks to text, tooltips, story events

• It is now possible to cancel assignments instead of choosing their target

General - Fixes

• The "Relatives" factor in event popup settings was not being factored in correctly

• Fixed issue where a specific map was being repeated frequently by the map generator

• Fixed issue where "great-niece" and "great-nephew" were being applied to characters of the wrong sex

• Fixed intermittent game halting bug when your character died without a natural heir

• Fixed bug where sometimes the Victory update was shown multiple times

• Fixed bug where the Victory update did not correctly report the amount of AP used

• An invalid Offer Justice action was not being shown with the reason why

• The defensive security multiplier to effectiveness is not applied when a character is targeted by their own house

• Fixed issue where impact of Kind/Cruel traits was inverted on the death of a disliked character

• The target of Improve Relations will now become aware of you when you start the assignment

Please do try out these changes and let us know what you think!

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