(Re)Awakening Patch Beta

Hello everybody!

We've got one last surprise for you for this Endless Summer: A beta for an upcoming Endless Space 2 patch.

As we mentioned during Amplified, we have contracted our VIPs CaptainCobbs and Cyrob to help us improve Endless Space 2 and the Awakening DLC in particular according to the feedback from the community. We have been working on this for some time, but so far only a beta version of the bugfixes had been available. Now, we're finally ready to release a beta of some of the upcoming design and balance changes, and we're eager to hear what you think.

You can access this beta version by opening the game's properties on Steam, going to the Betas tab, and selecting the PatchPreview beta branch.

Please be aware that this is a work in progress. Some changes may be incomplete, and several will have UI errors, including missing localization (though most string names should explain what the effects do). These will be addressed for the official release, but as we want your feedback on the new Nakalim, we did not want to delay this beta.

Here's a summary of what you can find in this version:

Changes Implemented in This Beta:

Note: For many of these changes, localization has not been done yet, so they may display localization keys instead of localized text

Reduced Academy Aggression

The Academy will no longer siege your systems while you have neutral relations with them, and their fleets should now be smaller and less aggressive in the early game, as we fixed a bug with the scaling of academy "stress" across the game.

Nakalim Changes

The Nakalim have been changed significantly to alleviate some of the aspects our players found frustrating and put them on a more even playing field to other factions across the game, while trying to maintain their theme of an ancient empire reclaiming their lost knowledge and holdings.

Gameplay Affinity: The Last Empire (changed)

• -50% Base FIDS on Planets by default
• Can build Temples (Cost 1 Relic and 1 Turn), which remove the FIDS malus and convert Base Science into Influence.
• Systems that have temples on all planets can build a Cathedral (Cost 1120 Industry, no Relics), which provide the following bonuses on their system:
  • +10% FIDSI
  • +30% Influence Radius
  • +5 Vision
  • 5% Enemy Health damaged per turn of Fleets in Influence Radius
  • 20% Friendly Health repaired per turn of Fleets in Influence Radius
  • Increases number of total empire relics that can be allocated
• Cathedrals provide empire relic slots, which provide powerful empire-wide bonuses and require multiple relics to activate. Any bonus may be activated at any time, but only one per Cathedral may be active. These replace Food/Industry/Dust/Influence relics, and are toggleable on / off. Empire relics focus on increasing one of the innate strengths of the Nakalim, with one changing based off of leading political party
  • Exploration Slot - +25% Movement Point efficiency, +25% Vision Range on Fleets & Ships
  • Expansion Slot - +1 Colonization Threshold per Cathedral, No disapproval from planet type on planets with temples
  • Diplomacy Slot - Increased bonus from Co-Operative Protocol, Can use all minor faction boosts regardless of personality type
  • Political Slot: Get bonuses for all elected parties, but government types with fewer political parties get more powerful bonuses
    • Industrialist - +50% Strategic Deposit Generation on Temples
    • Scientist - +20 Dust, +10 Influence, +10 Manpower per Unassigned Relic
    • Pacifist - Systems with Cathedrals are counted as having subsidiaries. If that system already has a subsidiary, then it has x1.5 trade value.
    • Ecologist - +50% Luxury Deposit Generation on Temples
    • Religious - Heroes can be assigned outside of Borders
    • Militarist - Fleets can be retrofitted outside of Friendly Territory
• Can assign a relic to a hero, which provides the following bonuses (you can no longer assign multiple relics to a hero, the effect is now binary):
  • +25% XP on Hero
  • +50% Hero Recovery Rate
  • +10% FIDSI on Fervent, +5 Approval per Temple on System
  • +10% Fleet Health, +10% Fleet Damage, +10% Fleet Evasion, +10% Fleet Shields
• Unassigned relics generate 50 science, can be upgraded via empire improvements
• Adjusted relic spawning formulas to respawn them once they reach a certain threshold and to focus their spawning location on getting further and further, eventially stopping near the middle of the galaxy.

Well Founded (new trait, not localized yet)

• Starts with the area around them revealed (Starting constellation on non-unique galaxies, radius of systems around them on unique galaxies)

Forgotten Lore (changed)

• Default Forgotten Lore trait remains unchanged: Starts with first 2 tiers of techs researched, Sophons not affected
• Added an alternate "Forgotten Lore" trait that only unlocks the first tier to be used by custom factions

Beliefs Not Breakthroughs (changed)

• Planets do not generate science
• all science improvements are 50% less effective
• Trading technologies with other empires is possible but very expensive
• -50% Science per CP from Scrapping

Slumbering Ruins (new, User Interface not finished)

• Two systems will be marked as Slumbering Ruins per Nakalim player. These systems are marked to all Nakalim players, and retain their status even if colonized by another empire or obliterated (though, owned by another player it needs to first be conquered, or if obliterated it needs to be repaired).
• The system can be awakened from its dormant state via some sort of fleet action that takes 8 turns, or an influence constructible if the system is already colonized.
• Awakening a Slumbering Ruin provides a small amount of Major Population, a few early game buildings (if not already constructed), and a temporary flat FIDSI bonus for about 10 turns.
• Once Awakened, a system cannot be reawakened by another Nakalim player, but all Nakalim players can see that it was reawakened.
• Slumbering Ruins systems are specially targeted by quest rewards, temples, and cathedrals (we'll decide on the bonuses later).

Apathetic Colonists (Changed, new effect not localized yet)

• Outposts generate 25% less food and are shipped 25% less

Nakalim Heroes (changed) 

• All but one hero skill have been adjusted

Nakalim Population Traits (changed) 

• Population Trait: Fervent Diligence
  • Primary: +2 Approval (+1 Approval Spliced)
  • Secondary: +2 FIDSI on Happy (+0.5 FIDSI Spliced)
• Collection Bonuses not implemented yet
• Politics
  • Religious
  • Anti-Scientist
  • Preservationists (Militarist -> Ecologist)

Xirmisala Citizens (changed) 

• Starts with Xirmisala citizens
• Xirmisala Traits
  • Primary: +1 Food
  • Secondary: +4 Dust on Happy
• Collection Bonus and Assimilation Traits not implemented yet
• Politics:
  • Religious
  • Anti-Scientific
  • Pious (Pacifist->Religious)

Bugfixes

• Battle Result Notifications no longer block the turn, while keeping the big stability improvement that originally caused this issue (Note: This fix works for Single Player and Multiplayer hosts only, but not Multiplayer clients, who will still need to dismiss the battle report notification to let the end turn progress)
• The Academy's aggression & power level now starts at 0 and grows slower, before it started out near or above max due to the galaxy generation process triggering it
• Isolated systems are no longer blocked from being colonized by the quest Death Without a Corpse
• Horatio's Main Quest: Chapter 2 (Industrialist) will no longer get stuck if another empire destroys the fleets (It will complete)
• Relics gained from converting will always be 2, it is no longer scaled by gamespeed which resulted in 1.33 relics on slow
• Quest "Forged in Battle" Now is 25-55 turns instead of 10-70 by galaxy size
• System Trade Value no longer scales with Game Speed
• The mining probe lifetime of multiple Behemoth modules is no longer additive, now taking the highest instead
• Influence gained from Lumeris pop bonus is now shown in the Empire Influence tooltip
• Unfallen Terraform Options (Hot types to Forest) now use the forest art (previously all were Savannah)
• Optics Research Lab's Yield is now shown in the System Science Tooltip
• All Singularities now affect heroes as intended
• The Diagnostics.xml file should no longer be filled with errors if the Nakalim main menu screen is displayed
• Fixed Nakalim being after the Umbral Choir in the faction selection
• Behemoths no longer shown under Faction Hulls for every faction
• Capped many cost reductions from reaching 0%
• GasWarm now has the Temperate tag
• Fixed Custom Umbral Shadows not having GUI Elements

Planned Changes

There are some other changes we want to make, but which were not ready in time for this beta. Nonetheless, we'd like to give you an overview of what we're working on:

• Adjusted Academy Roles
• Nerfed fleet for the Spear, including inability to invade systems
• New "Rally" system defense strategy for ground battles
• Nakalim Specific Science System Improvements
• Nakalim Quest Rebalance (Objectives and Rewards)
• New Nakalim Population Collection Bonus: 1. +Religious, 2. +15 Approval, 3. Improved Orbital Bombardment strategy, Improved Rally strategy
• New Xirmisala Population Collection Bonus: 1. +Religious, 2.+15% Dust on Systems, 3. Collection Law - Dust Sensitive: Reveals Arcane Curiosities, which when searched will provide a large amount of Dust
• New Xirmisala Assimilation Traits

Once we are satisfied with the changes to the Nakalim and the Academy, we would also like to examine the combat system and the economy to see what needs rebalancing. However, we will need to assess if we will have the capacity and time to do this once the Awakening improvements are finished, so this more general balancing pass may not happen.

We hope you'll enjoy playing with the new Nakalim, even if we have more changes in store for them and the Academy, and look forward to hearing your feedback.