Update 1.1.0 -- Galactic Statecraft

Update 1.1.0 -- Galactic Statecraft

Hey everyone! We've recently discussed the big changes coming to Endless Space 2 with Galactic Statecraft, and three days of blog posts weren't even enough to all showcase the good stuff! In case you missed them, we invite you to take a look at them: improved alliances, coordination tool, diplomatic requests, pressure retake, constellation control, pirate lairs, heretic's quest rewards, hall of fame.

In short: we've added many quality of life features, and revamped a bunch of existing ones, to make the game a richer, more rewarding experience. Interactions with the AI in particular will benefit immensely from the update, along with players who enjoy throttling their enemies through non-military means. 

We have a whole bunch of cool things coming up tonight to celebrate the release of Galactic Statecraft, so whatever plans you had for the week-end, it's never too late to cancel. The full update notes are below, but we know some of you don't like reading, so we even made a video to introduce the update. Check it out!

Galactic Statecraft update notes:

Diplomacy

• Denounce Alliance Decision: players can now decide to leave an alliance after one of its members declared a war. They go back to Cold War with all involved parties

• Coordination Tool: players in an alliance can now place “pings” directly on the galactic map to display their intentions (attack here, defend here). The AI is sensitive to these pings and also places its own pings

• Co-operative Protocol: players in an alliance can now sign this pact. It will provide a faction-specific bonus that scales over time at the cost of an Influence upkeep

• Chat:

  • Added an “Alliance” specific tab in the chat window

  • Whisper Improvement. The players can directly send whispers by clicking on the colored button representing a player near the end turn button

• Diplomatic Requests: players can now request the AI (and vice-versa) to do actions relating to a certain game context (“remove your trespassing fleets!”). The sending player will be able to react (choose a diplomatic option) in case the recipient refuses the request

Pressure

• Pressure inputs have been made explicit in the “leader card” tooltip (in main diplomacy screen)

• A term to generate pressure directly has been added (“Bureaucratic Imbroglio”)

• Demands now only have 2 levels (reduced from 3)

• “Demand terms” have been added; exotic actions available only for a level 2 Demand

• “Refusal Penalties” have been added: refusing a Demand will now apply the selected penalty to the recipient

• War pressure:

  • War Pressure is now different from Pressure graphically

  • War Pressure trend impact is now feedbacked in battle notifications

Constellation Control

A player who owns the most systems in a fully discovered constellation will now claim a FIDSI bonus for their empire

Empire Chronicles

Hall of fame to record all completed games, allowing to view the final scoreboard along with the victory cutscene

Space Battle

Space battle weapons, defenses and other variables have been tweaked in various ways following player feedback (see “Space Battle” section below for details)

Pirates

• Pirate Lairs: Pirates are no longer spawned by Minor Factions, but by Pirate Lairs which are occupying some neutral systems. Players can destroy these bases by ground battles (and have a chance to get some loot!)

• Minor Factions will now spawn their own fleets to protect their systems. These fleets are static and stay on the Minor Faction’s home system

Academy & the Heretic

• Orbiting the Lost Graves after completion of the Heretic's quest will now yield dust gain per turn if the Lost have won, and manpower per turn if they have lost

• Rewards have been increased for the winning camp's podium of participants

• Only the winning camp will be able to recruit Heroes after winning, through either the Academy or the Marketplace, depending on the outcome

• Visuals will change on Lost Graves depending on the outcome

Visuals

• Added new visuals: Orbiting space stations as a planet fills up and a system develops

• New icons for Privateers & Pirates

• Added destroyed planet visual in discovery cinematic

• Fixed planet colonization cutscene being displayed and frozen when a ground battle is viewed during the colonization cutscene

• Fixed anomalies remaining on screen when entering galaxy scanview

• Added new image for finished auto explore notification

• Changed the flow of the space battle cutscenes launch to fix an issue that appeared when trying to visualize a battle around a node affected by the Rip singularity

• All Minor Factions now have an image artwork in the "Select A Target Empire to Attack" screen

Bailiff

• The bailiff system will now first scrap ships before improvements

• Improved Influence bailiff system to take into account Co-operative Protocols (will not make players lose the game)

Space Battle

• Feedback Improvements:

  • Added new feedback elements (Flak DPS on Kinetics & Missile Health on Missiles)

• Weapon Balancing:

  • Complete rebalancing of weapons to create more interesting play:

    • Kinetics now have an accuracy of 10% / 50% / 85%, playing a role of missile counter and strong short range damage

    • Missiles now have an accuracy of 100% / 50% / 25%, strong long range damage that can take out most Energy ship designs

    • Lasers now have an accuracy of 50% / 100% / 50%, with good damage. They will tend to defeat Beams and Kinetics, but will have a problem against Missiles

    • Beams now have an accuracy of 100% / 100% / 100%, with standard damage overall. They are sure to hit and will counter Kinetics. Their accuracy makes them perfect to use with counter tactics, and their critical hits can turn the tide of battle in your favor

    • Buffed "Advanced MAGGIE Laser": Now has +100% Damage against Shields

    • Buffed "Advanced HELL Array Laser": Now has +100% Damage against Shields

• Defense Balancing:

  • Buffed: Medium Ships, Large Ships and Motherships have increased Health

  • Buffed: Doubled shields' absorption, Tripled shields' life

• Military Power Balancing:

  • Defensive Military Power is now computed according to modules' values and should be more consistent

  • Manpower damage is now used to compute Offensive Military Power

  • Critical Hit Chance is now used to compute Offensive Military Power

• Squadrons:

  • Squadron life updates correctly when hit

  • Fixed squadrons not damaging each other

  • Fixed Wing Coordination not working

  • Squadrons now target Arks

• Fixed auto ship design not working for Unfallen Explorer and Colonizer Hulls

• Second level of "Non-Liquid Assets" now applies its Hull Absorption bonus correctly

• Battle theater effects are now listed in the Special Node Discovery notification

Ground Battle

• Unlocked Bhagaba special ground battle play ("White flag": slower ownership recovery for invader)

• Reduced Tikanan "Swarming Infantry" assimilation trait from -0.5% to -0.15% manpower Infantry cost

• Reduced "Monstrous Opponents" assimilation trait from +75% infantry health to +15% infantry health and +15% infantry damage

• Rebalanced troop stats:

  • Infantry: Reduced damage from 20-40 to 12-22

  • Armor: Reduced damage from 40-60 to 25-60

  • Plane: Reduced damage from 140-180 to 95-115

  • Plane: Reduced health from 300 to 200

  • Plane: Reduced manpower cost from 30 to 20

• Lowered manpower generated from "Conscription" from 200 to 175

• You now need at least 2 pops to select "Conscription" when defending in a ground battle

Quests and events

• The "Acquire" objective of the Riftborn quest "A Plague on Coroz" cannot be completed by custom Riftborn factions using the "Shipbound" trait so this choice is no longer available in that case

• Added a Quest Marker on the pirate fleet of the Exploration Quest Dust to Dust: part 3

• The Good Life quest will now work if Horatio’s ship is docked to an outpost which has just turned into a Colony

• Players now need to participate in a multiplayer quest to obtain a reward

• Academy Quest 01 now has a new ending: if a player finds the Academy before the quest ends, then the quest doesn't fail but success and display a new ending outcome

• The Cravers Quest "then we cracked the nuts inside” now completes only after the system is captured

• The event Riled Researchers now starts from turn 60 instead of 20 to avoid the AI from making choices harmful to its economy

• A Swarm of Locusts now informs the users how many fleets they have to destroy in order to receive a reward

• New rewards have been added for Deeds

• The church triumphant Part 2 now displays the right building in the objective

• Fixed Horatio Quest Improvements not working for Custom Factions

• Unfallen Quest chapter 2 is now more Vodyani-friendly

• Ripple effect now fails only if another Empire destroys the Lesser Empire Fleet

• Chapter 3 of the UE Quest: the Mezari Objective now scales with the current science production

• Tweaked Quest appearance rhythm overall

• Dust to Dust now fails when another Empire or the Lesser Empire attacks and destroys the fleet

• The quest no longer fails in "The Good Life" Exploration Quest if the player disbands the Lost Horatio

• Use of similar Dust icons for the effects of "A Two-way Street" (Dust gain and Upkeep increased) event could be confusing that's why we now use the same icon (Dust gain and Dust loss)

• The Battlestations reward of the "Collaboration or Cataclysm" quest doesn't display a placeholder icon and category anymore

• First two parts of the "Fighters and Bombers" quest now display correctly their outcome text upon completion

• If the player used to play a custom Faction Horatio, the Horatio faction quest could be endless. It now checks if the original Horatio are in the Empire. If they aren't, then the Quest will end

• It's now the same for all the Population Quests: we check if the player has the original population instead of the Custom ones

• Lowered Minor Faction relation threshold to ask for a quest from 75 to 50

• Changed the cost of asking for a quest from an Influence cost to a Dust cost

• To validate the quest Riftborn Chapter 1 part 1: the player has to possess only 9 buildings, and the feedback now reflects it

• If the player discovered the galaxy thanks to a shared map in the Sophons Quest Chapter 1 (alternative version) Science choice, the quest wasn't completed. Now the quest can be completed even if the player is helped by someone

• In the Lumeris Quest Chapter 1 Science choice, if the player discovered the galaxy thanks to a shared map, the quest wasn't completed. Now if the player is helped by someone, the quest can be completed

• "Dominance" and "Acceleration" rewards of the "Collaboration or Cataclysm" quest have now have temporary tooltips, we'll had more descriptive tooltips later

• The correct choice is now selected upon confirming a multiple choice quest after the notification was minimized

Technologies

• Added a "Continuum Sculptors" faction-specific tag on "Climate Engineering" tech

• Increased “Free Move Sophon” movement points from 2 to 4

• Added "All must Tithe II" to the unique alternative technology in case of unique constellation setting

• Fixed Lumeris being able to have 5 Trading Companies

• Added new Stage 4 Engine

• Moved Luxury Lottery unlock to the Atmospheric Filtration technology (previously Neural Robotics)

• Fixed issues with Horatio ash and lava colonization unlocks

• The technology which allows to unlock Heroes on Marketplace is now displayed in the Tutorial

• Fixed the AI being able to trade quest technologies

• Arks will now need to unlock additional slots by unlocking stages in the tech tree

• Victory Wonder no longer appears in the construction queue before you unlock the stage

• Fixed bug where a custom faction with Riftborn pop and Horatio affinity didn't have access to Adamantian mining

• The Systems Illumination or Radiance are no longer given to players with Ship Bound or Unfallen Affinity

• The deeds are now greyed out when the technology stage is unlocked by the Oracle of Science law

• Fixed an issue where "Technology stage unlocked" notifications of Economy and Trade and Military quadrants displayed misleading information

Laws & Politics

• Reduced "Deadly Intent Bill" from 50% to 33% damage bonus (75% to 40% for Republics)

• Increased effect from "Trusted Broker" law from 2% to 3.5% per turn, up to 50% (from 30%)

• Added a passive bonus on Outpost growth (+10%/+15% in Republic) for the "New Colony Rule" law

• Updated the effect of the Republic version of the base militarist law for consistency

• Removed default bonus pressure to Religious politic

• The Attends resolution tooltip has been corrected

• "Jingoist Joy Bill" Law does not allow for free war declaration in truce anymore

• Changed/Fixed the way the tech to change government, Autocracy and the Cravers visual affinity interact: Autocracy is not linked to the Cravers affinity anymore

• Fixed Custom Factions with the Cravers visual affinity being unable to change their government type

Diploma