Version 0.60 released

This version has the new game screen redesigned and finished. You can select core ruleset, extra rules, customize emperor’s name/sex, spend dynasty points, etc. A few things are still missing (like customizing the royal house crest) but majority of it is finished. Next, introduced a new mechanic, the Grand Imperial Banquet. It basically allows you to invite all heads of the noble house in bulk and then chat with them on various topic (chat individually or make toasts to address certain issues). Please give me feedback what you think about this mechanic. It’s a bit rough right now but definitely within the mood of being the emperor. Next is a small thing which will become very important later, centralization mechanic which is right now an experimental feature (needs to be manually enabled). I also added a bunch of much needed new random events and cleaned up & finished the existing ones (except the dreaded ministerial events which are still unfinished). Overall, with this version I tried to finish some basic stuff that was long due and to take a step back and reflect on the gameplay and see what needs redesign or a different approach.

– [feature] Banquet can be organized which allows to invite heads of all noble houses and discuss various things (there is a button on Audience screen for this). It’s expensive and time consuming (Emperor’s focus points) but it allows to strike deals and smooth rough edges with relations.
– [feature] New game screen was redesigned and there is now “ruleset selector” which replaced the old rules checkboxes. Basically, now you select what options you want in bulk, tailored to a specific experience you desire (like if you want more/less randomness and control).
– [feature] Option to play without manual technologies selection (add to queue is disable then and the technology is selected by imperial researchers). This is to simulate even more “ruling from the heights of the imperial throne” premise since some people requested to have less control over such mundane tasks. You need to select “Hands off” ruleset to enable this option.
– [feature] New game screen now has “extra rules” which you can select in any combination you wish. Most of those make the game harder.
– [feature] 5 extra rules (Surrounded by Idiots, Surrounded by Traitors, Surrounded by Ugly, Surrounded by Thieves, Complex Laws).
– [feature] New game screen “Start Dynasty” button works now. It allows you to customize the Emperor/Empress (name, sex, portrait). Note that house customization (like crest selection) is not implemented yet but it will be in the same place.
– [feature] Start Dynasty allows you to select various dynastic perks (very similar to the ones from Stellar Monarch if you played the prequel). Unused dynasty points are converted to extra Stability (which is also done automatically if you select “Quick start”).
– [feature] Experimental feature (needs to be enabled by going to Options and checking “Enable experimental features”): Centralization. It will make a new parameter to be displayed on the top bar and this mechanic is going to be a very important one in future. Right now there is no way to increase Centralization level and it does not affect Coronation Ceremony, that’s why it’s marked as experimental.

– [content] Many more audience events. Also finished unfinished events (except ministries related ones).
– [content] Added banquet preparations related events (musicians, cooks, poets, etc offering their services).

– [misc] Renamed game modes to scenarios.
– [misc] Military ranks slight cleanup.
– [misc] Audience events are properly randomized now (in the previous versions some of the events appeared in a fixed order).

– [balance] Increased cost of laws.

– [interface] Top menu tooltips cleaned up, unified and improved.
– [interface] Bureaucracy tooltip on finances screen shows details what are the sources of bureaucracy bonuses/penalties.
– [interface] Escape key properly closes all windows in all parts of the game while always retaining/restoring the higher level window.

– [fix] Various small bugfixes.

Compatibility note: INCOMPATIBLE, this version will not work with old saves (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.51 released

This version focuses on ministries and character statistics. The character stats were explained so poorly that even I could not make heads and tails out of them sometimes, so I reviewed all those tooltips and stats rules, clarified them and simplified. In addition extra modifiers to stats were added. Now it should be much more clear what affects courtiers and what ministers. The second big thing is bonuses from ministries. Now each ministry provides a bonus each turn, listed conveniently on the ministry tab. The calculations of ministry efficiency were redesigned and simplified (now everything is just a bonus or a penalty to competence of the minister making it all more logical). The last thing was redesign of the high command screen with a clear separation of support staff and line admirals.

– [feature] Ministries now provide additional bonuses based on the ministry level like savings, rebels control, corruption reduction, etc in addition to adjusting the chance for a good/bad audience event. Those bonuses are quite powerful (for example a very competent Minister of Treasury can provide savings equal up to half of the bureaucracy costs), so now competent Ministers can be very valuable. Note that Foreign Affairs ministry provide no bonus yet.
– [feature] House relations affect loyalty of the character supporting that house (as explained in Loyalty stat tooltip).
– [feature] House with Old Aristocracy tradition grants +1 Charisma bonus to all characters that are their supporters.
– [feature] Officer Corps reform increases all officers salaries.
– [feature] Added Colonels and Political officers to Fleets.
– [feature] All military personnel (High Command and Fleet officers) can be interacted with (they have just one option right now).
– [feature] Able to fire officers from the royal house fleet or from any fleet if the officer’s corps reform has been passed. Also political officers can always be fired from any fleet.

– [misc] High command redesign (portraits moved to right, simplified, removed unused Ground forces tab).
– [misc] No traits for high command staff and political officers.
– [misc] High command staff ranks renamed to “Staff” (which make it more clear who is the staff in the high command dealing with military plans and logistics and who is the line admiral leading a fleet to battle).
– [misc] As of this version all reforms are finished (they might be fine-tuned later but all their existing effects work).

– [content] Some reports got new art.

– [interface] Ministers got special hats, color coded to their ministry, to make them more prominent on the screen.
– [interface] Greatly improved characters tooltips (more intuitive, more informative, more colorful, more beautiful).
– [interface] Beautified and improved all tooltips on the Ministry screen.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.50+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.50 released

This is a quite unusual version, its purpose is to consolidate things and remove the weak parts. It has few new features but a lot of tinkering with existing ones. Basically, I took a look at all the mechanics and content and decided to get rid of some, permanently or temporarily, or redesign those. Noble Houses got rearranged, their positions, crests, traditions, etc, all to feel them more coherent and to allow me to build later a sort of story and background for those, like some are warlike, some come from an old aristocracy and some are upstart industrial mongers. Reforms and laws were tinkered with as well. Finished two long ago promised features, rare resources and science perks. In addition ministries were redesigned.

– [feature] Rare resources (effects, descriptions, random generation). Note that those are somewhat bleak, definitely to be fine-tuned later. Also description style of those differs a lot, it’s because I wanted to test which style would be better. So it’s more like a first iteration of rare resources, not the final thing.
– [feature] Science perks (for now only one science perk per field is implemented but those fully work).
– [feature] Ministries redesigned. Now the level of ministry is Competence of Minister modified by various bonuses and penalties. Which is more clear and logical. Also, the size of the Empire drastically affects the penalties, so you need to expand ministry offices in order to keep up with growing Empire or face growing government inefficiency.

– [removed] Commerce reform removed (felt that exactly 7 reforms would be the best).
– [removed] Voltar, Fungoids, Automated Worlds removed (probably will be back later, once there are more fleshed out).
– [removed] Crime concept removed.
– [removed] Consumer goods concept removed.

– [misc] Voting Census reform replaced with Imperial Protocol Reform which allows more focus points for the Emperor.
– [misc] Moved Former Ministers Act law effect to Administration reform and the law was removed.
– [misc] Noble Houses crests and colors rearranged (to make it feel better, with left size more peaceful and right side more warlike, etc).
– [misc] Noble Houses traditions rearrangement (now there are 3 primary and 6 secondary traditions).
– [misc] Xeno races decolonize worlds they conquered.
– [misc] Technical: optimization of the executable (a minor thing).
– [misc] Technical: game version now includes build type (Release/Steam/GOG).

– [balance] Noble Houses max squadrons are now mostly based on the number of cities in their fiefs (uncapped) which is more intuitive and logical.
– [balance] Officer Corps Reform grants +25% max squadrons (instead of flat +20 squadrons).

– [content] More laws. Some were added some were removed.

– [interface] Ministers have all unique colors making them easier to identify (ministers’ bars colors, tabs on ministry screen, laws related to ministry colors, etc). Also Advisor and Inspector positions got unique colors.
– [interface] Personnel tooltips have colored stats (Competence/Loyalty/Charisma) with a description how much above/below the average the value is.
– [interface] Cleaned up and beautified diplomacy left side section.
– [interface] Reform button shows progress bar if a reform is in progress.

– [fix] Order of reforms changes after initiating a reform bug.
– [fix] Infinite prototype promotions bug.
– [fix] Small non critical memory overwrites (inside data structures only so most likely overwriting non critical stuff) also additional memory safeguards and cleanup.

Compatibility note: INCOMPATIBLE, this version will not work with old saves (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.46 released

This is the last version from the v0.4x stage and it’s focusing on finishing things introduced in the previous version and on cleanup. Mostly finetuning ships and aliens diplomacy/intelligence screen redesign plus some smaller features you requested. It has no spectacular features but makes the overall experience much nicer by smoothing many rough edges.

– [feature] Ships now can have abilities which affect this ship only (decoys, armor piercing beam weapons, etc). All existing ship hulls from older saves will auto adjust to those on game load.
– [feature] AI techs improve over time (at different pace, depending on race).
– [feature] Rebels have technological level cloned from imperial techs and then reduced a bit (because rebels have no access to the top most advanced imperial techs immediately).

– [removed] Option to set border priorities via intelligence screen (it should be done via High Command screen).
– [removed] Outpost construction speed bonus from communication range removed (needless complexity for marginal decision making since at the beginning you have all potential planets for colonization in good comm range anyway).

– [misc] Ship abilities cleanup (removed useless ones and added more cool ones).

– [balance] Rebalanced all ships.

– [content] All ships have unique abilities.
– [content] All ships have unique names and custom descriptions.
– [content] Extended alien races descriptions.

– [interface] Diplomacy/Intelligence screen redesign and cleanup. Also added an option to cancel the truce (cancelling a truce is free at any time).
– [interface] Truce is displayed instead of War if truce is in effect.
– [interface] Battle simulator action logs have mini tooltips (HP/Shields/Armor/etc) for ship names in the action log.
– [interface] Fleets details screen got improved selector for quick access to other fleets (later the same selector will be added for aliens screen and ships screen).
– [interface] Communication towers tooltip list ALL effects (people are confused) {Cities output bonus, loyalty of planets, tactical bonus}.
– [interface] Ship details screen list all ship stats (very crude, without tooltips for now).
– [interface] Hull origin notes on various tooltips/screens (field of science, blueprint type).

– [fix] House support a reform option will now disregard completed reforms since supporting those makes no sense anymore.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.45+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.45 released

This is a quite exciting version I would say. A lot of stuff which I was coding in the last month and which were disabled due to being incomplete became finished and enabled now. Which means two big features. The first is the battle simulator which allows you to examine how the squadron you designed performs in a real combat versus an enemy squadron. It comes in two versions, Quick one which lets you check the overall results and Full which lets you examine detailed action logs showing which ship targeted which ship in which combat round and how much damage went to shields and how much to the ship’s hull, which ship was targeted by missiles, how many guided missiles were jammed, which ship was assaulted by fighters and how many of those were fended off by point defense weapons and how many bombs hit the target. The second big feature is the ship hulls unlocked by technologies and the ships screen. The screen allows you to examine all ship hulls, promote blueprints to prototypes, speed up the prototyping period and use some monetary incentives to make the imperial designers work harder and faster without their lame excuses why the new ship hull can’t be ready for production yet. In addition there are bunch of other features and changes like auto queuing of research option, redone houses relations, more alien races, etc. This also means this version might be quite unbalanced (note you can still play the old v0.44 via the Beta branch) and also note that the new stuff might be somewhat rough (but not necessarily, the battle simulator is decently polished for example although not 100% complete).

I would also like to thank the community. This is my fourth Early Access game and I can say that the Stellar Monarch series fans are the most forgiving when it comes to my experimentation with the new versions and those who understand the most the true nature of E.A. This attitude grants me a lot of freedom during experimentation and redoing/breaking/replacing features without the fear of the community’s reaction. This really speeds up the development process and let me make a better game in the long run, for which I want to thank you very much! Appreciated.

– [feature] Military/Ships screen with ship hulls listed, filters, option to mark favorite hulls, etc.
– [feature] Ship hulls are now properly unlocked by technologies.
– [feature] Ship hulls Blueprints can be promoted to Prototypes.
– [feature] Option to buy extra Prototype promotions (quite expensive) which can be used as an alternative to scientific research.
– [feature] Battle simulator works now. Divided into “Quick” (where you see just the result vs a selected opponent) and “Full” where you can see detailed action logs describing what happened and why it happened.
– [feature] Noble Houses relations redone to 7 tiers, also rescaled opinions to 100 opinion per relation tier and simplified it a bit (now opinion directly translates to relations without a delay).
– [feature] Gameplay option to auto queue technologies (for people who are too lazy to click on those or who thinks the emperor has better things to do than deal with research). The algorithm will strive to queue it in the way that you reach the top level technologies as quickly as possible. You can toggle it on/off anytime.

– [remove] Removed armada (since this mechanic made no sense with the new wide front combat model anyway, maybe it will be back in another form later).

– [misc] Renamed Parasites to Arachnians (I plan to use parasites as a planetary feature).
– [misc] Switched naming of ship class with ship type (to make it like in the real world).
– [misc] Various ships cleanups (hull materials names, AI ship weapons compositions, removed unused Drones, etc).

– [content] More ships (all ships from all technologies unlocking ship hulls), more technologies unlocking new hulls.
– [content] Additional technologies.
– [content] Added all planned alien races (some are only defined and not activated in the game yet). Also properly divided population into biological/mechanical (later it could be used for different effects of weapons for example).

– [balance] Redone and rebalanced AI civilized offensives (now also takes into account racial luxury percentage, which means powerful but decadent races who spend most income on luxuries will not be that much of a threat).

– [interface] Load/Save tooltip with a more clear explanation of a failed load savefile due to old version save which also indicates the Beta version availability.
– [interface] Added luxury percentage value to intelligence screen.
– [interface] Improved noble houses relations tooltip (now displaying clearly how much opinion each tier of relations requires) and improved several other house tooltips.
– [interface] Intelligence screen shows the emperor’s portrait for the Empire, also rebels portrait is randomized now.

– [fix] Small bug where super hostile house was overwriting the super hostile one upon start.
– [fix] Civilized races were making no offensive plans in mid/late game making the quite passive as the game progressed.
– [fix] Parasites never woke up the entire game (note that Parasites were renamed to Arachnians).

Compatibility note: INCOMPATIBLE, this version will not work with old saves (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.44 released

This is the kind of version which is very ungrateful to write the changes logs for. Most of the stuff I implemented is not even listed below because it was mostly about internal mechanics, not visible to the player at all but very, very important for the future features (read: battle simulator which is starting to take a nice shape but is not enabled in this version yet). So, here it is, a bunch of fixes, small interface improvements and content updates.

– [feature] All summon to audience options now use Emperor Focus points, can’t be cancelled and have no limit to the number of people summoned per audience (so now all “summon” buttons use the same mechanic). Also, regular governors can be summoned as well, but for a higher cost than governors of megalopolises.
– [feature] Traditions for noble houses (affects initial reforms support, how the house votes, perks, etc). Very barebone for now.

– [misc] Optimized saves filesize (it went a bit excessive).
– [misc] Renamed Hospitability to Habitability which is much more intuitive.
– [misc] Renamed Emperor’s Attention points to Emperor’s Focus points.
– [misc] Note that behind the scenes combat mechanics were changed heavily (but I tried to not upset the current gameplay balance, so ideally you should notice no difference here).

– [content] Added option to summon a head of a noble house to discuss reforms.
– [content] Events: Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Bank.

– [interface] Added Relation/Opinion/Favors on noble personnel audience screen.
– [interface] Audience events tooltip for modifiers list all the effects of the modifier.
– [interface] Audience events tooltips improved to make audience effects display more clear.
– [interface] Noble Houses ornamental bar on houses screen (with traditions icons added).
– [interface] Squadrons screen improved.

– [fix] Race descriptions: Outdated Terran race description (race details – society), fixed one wrong alien portrait also added some basic description to all xeno races.
– [fix] Wrong tooltips descriptions for some planets in the Astronomy minimap mode.
– [fix] The back button in the construction menu working incorrectly.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.40+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.43 released

Fourth update since E.A. has started. This version contains many small but very nice interface improvements, the premise being “less clicking”. Hotkeys were redesigned and assigned to the most frequently used actions. The reports auto zoom on a planet which is being reported (can be toggled on/off) and other small improvements. In addition strategic interstellar missiles were implemented and space exploration rebalanced.

– [feature] Interstellar strategic missiles (like strategic bombs but without the need for the orbit control, requires an imperial starbase in range).
– [feature] Strategic weapons production changed. You can produce as many strategic weapons as you want, but the price increases each time you purchase one (the counter resets upon Council gathering (each season)). Also, the base price increases a bit each season.
– [feature] Upkeep for starbases/fortresses/comm towers implemented (for now the cost is very low).

– [remove] Removed happiness reduction over time (too confusing and growing decadence of the Empire can be portrayed by other means anyway).
– [remove] Temporarily removed biological bombs (those will be back later).

– [misc] Overmind is killed when a civilized race takes over a planet.
– [misc] Custom options have been reset due to storage change (just recheck those as you wish and those will save properly).

– [balance] Requirements for planet ‘s loyalty glorious achievement reduced.
– [balance] Crime reduced (possibly the whole crime mechanic might be removed later, we will see).
– [balance] The number of exploration attempts each turn is now affected by the galaxy size.

– [content] Adventurer on audience event for additional exploration attempts. He will show up at later stages of the game (with a very low chance at the early stage) also the chance of showing up depends on the ratio of unexplored planets to the galaxy size.

– [interface] Finances tax tab beautified.
– [interface] Reports: auto find target planet on a report change (can be toggled on/off).
– [interface] Beautified right side report buttons and added “All” folder. Also tooltips on reports buttons listing hotkeys.
– [interface] “Find” planet button now has [f] hotkey (and a tooltip listing the hotkey).
– [interface] Removed several less used hotkeys (e/r/t) to free those for other uses (beside, those were assigned to not so often used actions anyway).
– [interface] Hotkeys redone: Now [q] is used for a “quick” access to the most used/logical action in the current context (for example on planets without any owner it would be “Establish outpost”, on alien planets “Conquest” on unexplored “Priority exploration”). Basically it means that you can click on a planet and then press ‘q’ and in like 80% of cases it will be exactly what you wanted to do. Also it’s used to cancel to just selected quick action. All [q] hotkeys are listed in the appropriate tooltips.
– [interface] Hotkeys [r] to open/close reports.
– [interface] Establish outpost and exploration priority displays on the starmap as orders (so you can see those on a glance and it’s more logical/consistent). Also added shades of the order marker so you can spot a difference between the outposts that can be established now and those that are not neighboring the imperial borders yet.

– [fix] Glorious achievement “All techs of level 10+” was not triggering.
– [fix] Other small fixes.

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.40+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Version 0.42 released

This version focuses on technologies, added a lot of new ones. Also added more technologies related to late game colonization since it was tricky with the existing technologies. In addition it has a mix of various smaller fixes, improvements and rebalances.

– [feature] New technologies (requires starting a new game to have access to those). Assured at least one 1-12 technology in each field of science regardless of technologies generation mode.
– [feature] Fortress worlds have x5 ground garrison and much faster ground forces reinforcements. Also provide additional missiles and fighters to imperial squadrons fighting over the planet (details in the Fortress tooltip).

– [misc] All staring megalopolises (Old empire setting) are now Megacity/Terran/Steppe/Jungle planets only.
– [misc] Megalopolises can be created on Hospitability 10 or higher (so at least one green maker is present) planets only (taking into account all factors, not just the planet type).
– [misc] AI now skips the first turn (no conquest on the game start anymore) since it was confusing to some players.
– [misc] Tonnage of AI squadrons redone, it’s a big change internally which is required for future features but not much very noticeable for now. You could notice only a mild spike in the alien squadrons effectiveness and that the tonnage numbers are different.

– [balance] Rescaled defensive priority range from 1-9 to 1-21 (allows orders having more impact).
– [balance] Defensive priorities rebalanced (now the defence is 3 jumps deep also a lot of numbers adjusted).

– [interface] Alien planets have now hidden labor and infr. points.
– [interface] Disallowed access to Administrate/Fief tabs on lost planets.
– [interface] Improved tooltips for starmap homeworlds (specified alien capital/overmind and also displayed the owner crest).
– [interface] Outpost/Colonization properly display a note it’s impossible on heavy radiated planets.

– [fix] Nukes heavy radiation bug. Illegally taking control over heavy radiated planets (outposts, colonization, combat, etc).
– [fix] Incorrect “Capital of the empire” tooltip on enemy homeworld planets.
– [fix] Hostile aliens now destroy player starbases if the planet is owned by them for any reason (for aliens who do not declare wars and to handle lost worlds).

Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.40+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).