Added new "Minor Factions" DLC:
- Minor Factions Introduction:
- Enabling this option will spawn random Minor Factions on suitable worlds in the galaxy. Every game will have a different combination of Minor Faction types and locations.
- Each spawn will be 1 of 15 unique Minor Factions where each has a theme and role, including mercenaries, xenophobes, pacifists, used ship dealers, demolition experts, resource miners, resistance fighters, arms dealers and more.
- Each Minor Faction spawns with a set of ships, structures, surface infrastructure, and powerful new abilities.
- Minor Factions and Envoys:
- By default Minor Factions are hostile to you but you can use an Envoy's Goodwill mission to convince them to join your side.
- In a hostile environment an Envoy can use its "Diplomatic Immunity" ability to secure the approach but its a limited duration ability so make sure no 3rd party enemies are there to disrupt you.
- Envoys cannot send Goodwill missions to Minor Factions that are aligned with enemy players. The enemy Envoy must be destroyed or forced to retreat.
- Your Envoy must continue its Goodwill mission to maintain the Minor Faction's allegiance (i.e it has to continue to channel the ability).
- Minor Faction Advantages:
- All the Minor Faction's default units and structures switch to your side but as you don't own them, they are only willing to go so far to help you out.
- Minor Faction units on your side are not controllable but will defend your space.
- Certain Minor Faction structures will provide benefits so long as its a benefit that you can't directly control - they don't like being told what to do. So, for example, you can't build from Minor Faction factories but any research labs, refineries, trade ports, repair bays and others will cooperate with your empire.
- Minor Faction factories and construction ships will regularly rebuild their forces and structures at no cost to you.
- Minor Factions will pay you a tithe as a percentage of their credit and resource income.
- Minor Factions will grant you full visibility of anything they detect.
- Minor Factions have an intrinsic ability to repel enemy culture.
- Minor Factions will grant you access to a variety of new abilities.
- Minor Faction Abilities:
- Each Minor Faction has a set of abilities customized to its theme and role.
- You can execute these abilities by selecting their planet and paying the cost to deploy the ability.
- As the game progresses you can make each ability more powerful by improving your diplomatic skills - i.e. research the appropriate subjects in your faction's diplomacy research tree.
- Some abilities generate new units. If the units are not under your direct control they won't cut into your fleet supply. If the units are under your direct control, they will affect your fleet supply. For example, if you purchase a siege raid against an enemy target, those forces will not affect your fleet supply because the only control you have is over the raid's timing and target. However, if you purchase a complement of siege ships from a ship dealer they will affect your fleet supply because you have direct control over them.
- Not all abilities have purely positive effects - some offer a trade-off where you gain a powerful positive effect at the cost of a negative effect. Be sure to read the tooltips carefully.
- Minor Faction Destruction:
- At some point you may deem it more beneficial to eliminate a Minor Faction than to tolerate its existence. Often this is to deny an enemy access to a Minor Faction you can't hope to control any time soon.
- When a Minor Faction planet is bombed into submission the Minor Faction is effectively eliminated forever denying any of its advantages to other players. All that remains are any Minor Faction ships and structures in orbit which won't be replaced after they are destroyed.
- An ex-Minor Faction planet can now be colonized as a regular planet.
- Minor Faction Multiplayer:
- If the host of a multiplayer game owns the Minor Faction DLC, anyone joining that game can access the Minor Faction DLC content even if they don't own the DLC.
Outlaw Sectors Changes:
- Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militias can now be enabled/disabled from the game options screen without disabling Smuggling and Pirate Turf.
- Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militia now spawn as the faction of the local controlling faction. If none exists, they default to TEC to match the desired lore that this is TEC territory.
- Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militias faction can now be Random from a list of options or attempt to match the local controlling faction.
- Default militia and Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militia now consider structure ownership in addition to planet > ship > random militia player when deciding their local controlling faction.
- Improved rendering and placement of NPC icons (e.g. Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militia units)
- Improved the error game event when you try to give move or attack orders to uncontrollable units (e.g. Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militia units).
- Fixed bug where players could control the squads/fighters of Outlaw Sectors Rampant Militia carrier units.
- Fixed NPC ships not always spawning in formation around a factory at the start of a match.
- Fixed NPC ships not always traveling or arriving in formation when spawned in hyperspace enroute to a planet.
- Fixed NPC ships not arriving on the same plane as the gravity well of the target planet when spawned in hyperspace enroute to a planet.
Free Updates to Base Game:
- Gameplay Changes:
- Added new game option to enable/disable superweapons.
- Added new game option to enable/disable Ai surrendering.
- Rebalanced Corvettes:
- Increased ExperiencePointsForDestroying to be in line with its own slot count and relative to other combat frigates.
- Decreased DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:CapitalShip: they aren't intended as anti-capitalship; in fact many capitalships were intended to be anti-corvettes (e.g. to help protect titans).
- Decreased DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Heavy: flak is intended to be the 'hardest' counter to corvettes, yet corvettes were too effective against them (partially due to firing angles and mobility but also due to this value).
- Decreased DamagePercentBonus:CORVETTE:Module: corvettes were too effective at raiding structures en masse.
- Added autocast function to squad building. Right click the squad management button to have the Ai automatically fill the unit's hangars.
- Superweapon autocast is now disabled by default.
- Envoy's Goodwill changed to only target Minor Faction planets. The passive bonus to relationship improvement has been refactored into an intrinsic property of Envoy frigates and is now rendered in their frigate tooltip.
- Gameplay Fixes:
- Fixed templates for dead asteroid and ship graveyard to support players potentially starting there.
- Fixed Titans not being positioned correctly near their factory when built.
- Fixed AntimatterRestoration buffModifier from being applied twice to antimatter regained through regeneration.
- Fixed plasma storm not affecting hangars (or any structures).
- Fixed hangars not auto launching fighters if they were autodocked.
- Fixed the infamous "Dark Space" bug where units would drop out of hyperspace between planets and take forever to arrive (and cause other units to chase them into the abyss).
- Fixed some fog-of-war exploits.
- Culture:
- Ships and structures that generate culture now properly benefit from CultureSpread and CultureSpreadModifier buffEntityModifiers from buffs on themselves instead of only from buffs on the orbitbody.
- BuffEntityModifierType::CultureSpreadRateForOwner now only applies to the player that owns the planet, and is now applied in the correct place along with the other multiplicative effects.
- Fixed BuffEntityModifierType::CultureSpreadModifier from overriding the culture value rather than being applied multiplicatively at the orbitbody level.
- Fix BuffEntityModifierType::EnemyCultureSpread not being applied unless BuffEntityModifierType::CultureSpread had a non-zero value as well (i.e. they now have no dependency on each other).
- CultureRepel now supports new additive and scalar BuffEntityModifiers.
- Fixed ResearchFloatModifierType::CapitalShipCultureProtectRateAdjustment incorrectly applying to titans and starbases as well.
- Net negative modifiers from planet upgrades now calculate their effect correctly.
- Culture spread buff modifier now displays a value in tooltips.
- Ai:
- Improved Ai credit/metal/crystal management.
- Fixed bug where Ai wouldn't build any more ships even with sufficient resources and capacity.
- Fixed bug where Ai would save 3 times the amount required for a superweapon.
- Fixed bug where Ai would hold on to savings even if it didn't need another superweapon.
- Fixed bug where Ai would start saving for a superweapon even if it didn't need one.
- Data drive the maximum number of cannons allowed for an Ai player (in addition to the per-owned-planet rule). GameplayConstants->maxAiCannons
- Fixed the TacticalStructureWeaponDamageAdjustment research modifier from being incorrectly applied to Ai analysis of hangars and defense platforms.
- Added debug option to view Ai savings.
- User Interface:
- Ability tooltips now render resources gained from their buffApplyAction.
- Fixed planet theme icons potentially rendering underneath main view icons of the planet.
- Fixed ability tooltips not always displaying ship slot and/or capital crew costs.
- Culture spread buff modifier now displays a value in tooltips.
- Disabled rendering autocast options in tooltips for abilities that can't be autocast.
- Modding:
- Added new archive system to better handle backwards compatibility.
- Added backwards compatibility for most v1.92 mods.
- Added backwards compatibility for most mods that worked prior to v1.92 (i.e. pre-GDPR) but had not been converted to the v1.92 (post-GDPR) format.
- Added backwards compatibility for the previous version of player created GalaxyScenarios.
- If a mod can't find a string it now uses the string value from the main game string file.
- Update GalaxyForge:
- Added some Minor Faction options (likely more to come in a future update).
- Remove some obsolete, incomplete features that were causing confusion (triggers and selectiontoolkit).
- CultureRepel now supports new additive and scalar BuffEntityModifiers.
- Replaced player entity "isPsi" with proper PlayerRaceType.
- Added a variety of new debug options to destroy NPC units more selectively.
- Fixed minor bug with ChangePlayerIndexToNeutral and ChangePlayerIndexToCreator BuffInstantActionStates where they were erroneously attempting to add the affected unit to the first spawner's fleet even though the first spawner's player wasn't the new owner.
- Failure to create enum from string error now reports the specific enum to make it easier for modders to track data errors.
- Buff changes
- New BuffInstantActionTypes:
- ApplyBuffToLocalOrbitBodiesWithinDistance
- ApplyBuffToAllFirstSpawnerShipsAndStructures
- ChangePlayerIndexToPriorMinorFaction
- GiveResourceToPlayer
- RemovePlanetPopulation
- SpawnShipsAtPlanetWithTarget
- SpawnShipsAtPlanetWithRandomTarget
- New BuffOverTimeActionType:
- StealPopulationFromAdjacentPlanets
- New BuffEntityModifierTypes:
- AntiModuleDamageAsDamageDealer
- CultureRepelRateAdditive
- CultureRepelRateScalar
- PlanetBombingDamageAsDamageDealer
- New BuffFinishConditionType:
- AnyInstantActionWithTriggerTypeDone
- New InstantActionTriggerType:
- New InstantActionConditionType:
- IfTargetIsNotMinorFactionOwned
- TargetFilter changes
- New TargetOwnership:
- New TargetConstraints:
- HasColonizeAbility
- NotIsExplored
- NotIsTech
- NotIsMinorFactionOwned
- NotIsOutlaw
- Template changes:
- New PlanetItemsTemplate group condition type:
- PlanetOwnerIsMinorFactionWithFactionName
- Technical:
- Added backwards compatibility for most v1.92 save games.
- Improved game load times.
- Improved game exit times.
- Fixed ICO crash.
- Fixed a number of client crashes.
- Fixed a sync bug.
- Fixed memory leak.
- Changed system requirements to Window 7 SP1 and above.
- Misc:
- Added new sky box (technically an old skybox but was removed by mistake in 2012).