Update log
Full Stars in Shadow update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Balance
- Gameplay
That transmission... Mother's deciphered part of it. It doesn't look like an S.O.S. It... it looks like a warning.
Today's update contains some significant changes to economic balance and AI behavior, as well as a number of UI and gameplay improvements. As always, your feedback and suggestions are important to us, so keep them coming!
Economic and Difficulty Balance Changes
We've felt for some time that it was a little bit too easy for factions to field impossibly (and sometimes game-breakingly) large fleets, and so we have substantially adjusted economic balance by increasing ship upkeep costs and curtailing the number and value of trade routes. Players must now invest more in economic support infrastructure as their fleets grow larger than a certain size.
Because these smaller fleet sizes negatively impacted the capability of AI factions to present a challenge on the harder difficulty levels, we also spent a lot of effort to improve AI play. We feel that the AI now plays a better game, to the extent that we ended up reducing some of the bonuses the AI receives at easier difficulty levels.
We also were finding the Gremak advantages to be a bit lackluster in many games, and so we juiced them up a bit.
Patch Notes for 7 October 2019 (ver. r38550)
Gameplay Changes and Additions
Gremak empires now receive additional resources when sacrificing slaves with Forced Labor and science Experiments.
Added the Gremak-exclusive 'Chattel Pharmaceuticals' technology, which improves Forced Labor yields and Slave experiments yields.
Increased the starting population of Gremal by +1 Enfi.
Assault marines and Marauder raiders now have a base combat power of 1.5 (up from 1.0).
Algorians and Lummox native population can now be enslaved and Harmonized.
Capped marauder bribe costs so that larger player empires are not asked for absurd tribute levels.
Marauders will now be less easily threatened into forming trade relations with you.
Trade ship and mercenary recall times will now scale with your empire's drive technology.
Annexing an ally will now give you access to all their technologies and ship designs.
It should no longer be possible to salvage or reverse engineer ship technologies if those technologies do not appear in your tech tree.
Annexed empires will now also contribute trade ships and transports to their new empire.
Androids now have higher population caps on Barren worlds.
Taking control of a planet with Androids will now unlock the 'Androids' technology.
Ships may now repair or use instant refit if appropriate allied infrastructure exists in the system.
Retreating ships may no longer "retreat" towards the system they're leaving.
Increased the tactical speed of Ashdar Battlecruisers and Fleet Carriers.
Removed one system slot from the Ashdar Fleet Carrier, and decreased its upkeep costs.
Removed one system slot from the Gremak Assault Carrier.
Understaffing penalties now apply to bonus production from special resources (affects Artifacts, Opil, Gems, Super Grain, and Precious Metals).
Economy Changes and Additions
Factions now receive a base income of 10 coins/turn.
Increased ship upkeep costs.
Reduced ship refit costs.
Reduced foreign trade route income from 3 coins to 2 coins.
Foreign trade routes now provide less income per route for additional trade treaties after the first.
Each empire can now have no more than 1 foreign trade route for every 2 domestic trade routes.
Humans now receive a 50% discount on ship upkeep costs.
Increased Torpedo Destroyer upkeep costs.
Reduced the amount of trade capacity provided by markets from 2/4/6 to 1/2/3.
City planning no longer benefits races that do not consume food.
Overcrowded population no longer contribute to
Source