Description

     Unlike System Approval, which provides a boost to Food Production and Influence, Empire Approval can be viewed by pressing F1, and provides boosts and penalties to Science and Dust Production, up to +30% with an ecstatic empire.

     Currently, as any empire, at any stage in the game, this multiplier is doing nothing. If your empire is happy, the game will state you are receiving a +15% Science and Dust boost, but none will be applied. If your empire is ecstatic, the game will state you are receiving a +30% Science and Dust boost, but no multiplier will be applied. This can be observed in literally any game at any stage of the game.

Steps to Reproduce

    Using the Toys for Boys law, you can easily reproduce this in the majority of games. By toggling the law on and off, if it would push your empire from happy to ecstatic, or the other direction, observe that your dust income remains completely unchanged, and your science will only change by the 10% which is the cost of Toys for Boys.

    If you would like a reproducible example from turn 1 of a fresh game, I can provide that using the sophons, and turning on Super Tax Act and Toys for Boys on turn 1.

Reproducibility

   5/5

Expected Behavior

   When the game states that an empire should be receiving bonuses for maintaining a high approval across the entire empire, or penalties for reaching low approval across the entire empire, these multipliers should be applied.  

Version

    All versions of the game from release until live (5/27/2017).

Notes

    This is a major  bug to leave unpatched for so long. Some empires, such as unfallen, lumeris, and cravers are designed around maintaining an ecstatic population, and by denying them this multiplier that the game clearly states should be active, they are actively being nerfed below their current potential.

    I will happily provide screenshots and evidence of examples if needed, but this bug can be perfectly reproduced in any game by reaching different empire approval numbers using Toys for Boys.

And the dev who answered it clearly didn't take the time to read the post and answered incorrectly. It is a major bug, and should be discussed until it is resolved.