Hello,

We are happy to share our next update which has massive improvements in performance, more challenging AI, better balance, and lots of bug fixes.  Please review below!

If you have trouble running the game, please restart steam.

Launcher

Read below for the new launcher will allow us to communicate better with you, better settings support, and more.  

Introducing the Launcher

Capstone Techs

In the Age of Ascension, players can now research that provide large, temporary empire-wide bonuses.  These techs can be researched repeatedly with stacking bonuses.

Optimization

• Memory: introduced new texture compression for planetary and ship textures to greatly reduce memory usage and dramatically improve startup times.
• Removed legacy stopwatch code from the sound system
• Moved old profiling junk
• Reduced CPU usage of the particles and main graphics threads
• Removed redundant debug output
• Multithreaded the texture loading at the start of game to improve performance.

AI

• AI builds scout ships later in the game to keep exploring very large galaxies
• Dramatically reduced AI >normal economic bonuses (no longer needs them)
• Re-designed the way the AI expands into the galaxy with colony ships so that its expansion no longer stalls on large maps
• Dramatically reduced the amount of time an AI will interact with a player if they are not within ship range
• AI doesn't try to bribe other players to go to war unless they and the other players have a decent military already
• AI will no longer give tech gifts to players with a different ideology (i.e. no more Drengin giving you tech if you're a nice person)
• AI now scales the number of similar ship projects based on number of colonies rather than a flat number
• AI pumps up colony ship production priority if there are a lot of nice planets laying around
• AI pumps out fewer Constructors in general
• Re-designed the way the AI determines which planets should get a shipyard to be more (way more) intelligent
• Updated AI's handling of adjacency bonuses to be more intelligent
• AI values planet quality more when picking planets to colonize 
• AI somewhat more heuristic on tech research
• AI somewhat quicker to war
• Auto Surveying Survey Ships will now survey extra anomalies if the ship has extra movement points.

Balance

• Diplomacy tech effect to Diplomacy ability increased from 0.5 to 1
• Influence MinToClaim increased from 0.33 to 8
• Influence Radius root reduced from 3.25 (^0.325) to square root (^0.5)
• Eliminated the Influence Bell Curve target divisor.
• Influence fall off is increased from -0.3 to –10
• Capital Influence per turn increased from 1.5 to 3
• Colony Influence per turn reduced from 2 to 1
• Removed the faction ability bonus from the Diplomatic Office
• Removed all faction ability bonuses from starbase modules
• AI is much MUCH smarter about detecting cultural flipping strategies
• AI is much better about detecting fast alliance strategies
• Colonies now instantly update when you rush build to show the effect of the new building.
• Adjusted tech cost to increase per tech age
• New capstone technologies that can be researched repeatedly for galaxy wide bonuses
• Minor races will now establish trade routes.
• Tweaked influence such that growth is now slower in general, but influence improvements and modules are now much more powerful.
• Increased starbase spacing to 4
• Adjusted intensity on several strategic map icons and the grid.
• AI tends to focus more on tech (generally) than previously.
• AI will build survey ships late in-game.
• AI provided with a much wider variety of ship designs to choose from with the various strategies.
• AI weights units much more closely than previously in order to not make one virtually impossible to build.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty reduced from 1.25 to 1.1 if AI is benevolent.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is merciless.
• Opposing culture diplomatic penalty increased from 1.25 to 2 if AI is cruel.
• Close to victory diplomatic penalties increased from 1 to 5.
• Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty reduced from 0.75 to 0.1 if AI is benevolent.
• Ripe for conquest diplomacy penalty increased from 0.75 to 1.25 if AI is aggressive.
• Minimum planet class to be a manufacturing world reduced from 7 to 4.
• Max number of colony ships the AI will construct at once increased from 2 to 3.
• Max slider focus reduced from 95% to 75% (to deal with coercion penalty).
• Coercion forgiveness eliminated (there is always some coercion if you move off from center).
• Maximum coercion reduced from 50% to 35%.
• Colony Capital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
• CivilizationCapital production points reduced from 5 to 1.
• Influence Radius root increased from 1.75 to 4 (i.e. influence ZOC will start out much much smaller now).
• Tech inflation penalty significantly reduced.
• Penalty for switching a constructor to a colony ship increased from 50% to 75% (yea, you know who you are).
• Pirates moved further away from starting location.
• Increased the variance for the various settings (minors, pirates, etc.).
• Modified the governor script to provide a bit more flexibility based on planet bonuses when building improvements.
• Colony capital maintenance eliminated.
• Colony capital hub provides a 2 (was 1) level bonus to adjacent buildings if they are population or manufacturing or research.
• Civ capital hub provides a 3 level bonus (was 1).
• Reduced maint. slightly on research buildings.
• Rare habitable planets decreased from 30% to 25%.
• Nebula and black holes and anomalies made much less common on all settings.
• Occasional planet frequency amount doubled from 1X to 2X.
• Common stars modifier increased from 0.9 to 1.
• Common planet frequency amount increased from 0.75X to 3X (this also fixes a bug where common was less than occasional).
• Abundant stars increased from 1X to 1.5X.
• Planet Frequency increased from 0.25X to 3.5X (also fixes bug).
• Tiny map base objects increased from 32 to 120 (i.e. tiny maps will be a lot more filled).
• Small map base object count increased from 64 to 150.
• Medium map Base object count increased from 110 to 200.
• Large map base object count increased from 155 to 300 (i.e. over twice as many stars/planets/etc. in a particular size).
• Huge map base object count increased from 250 to 350.
• INSANE map object count INCREASED from 1200 to 1400!
• Sensor cost components reduced slightly.
• Cargo module cost reduced from 27 to 10 (cheaper colony ships -- but remember, planets now rely more on population for their production).
• Tiny hull cost reduced from 11 to 10.
• Small hull cost reduced from 25 to 20.
• Medium hull HP increased from 100 to 120.
• Large hull cost increased from 128 to 300.
• Large hull HP increased from 250 to 600.
• Large hull storage increased from 100 to 120.
• Large hull logistics cost increased from 7 to 10.
• Huge hull cost increased from 432 to 500.
• Huge hull HP increased from 500 to 800.
• Huge hull storage increased from 250 to 300.
• Huge hull logistics increased from 10 to 16.
• Cargo hull cost reduced from 42 to 24.
• Cargo hull HP reduced from 10 to 1.
• Cargo hull logistics increased from 5 to 6.
• Made low level factories cheaper, provide smaller bonuses.
• Reduced the size of maps while keeping the same number of objects, effectively increasing the galactic density.
• Increased the zoom distance.  
• Lowered diplomacy bonus of the Diplomacy Techs.

Improvements/Bugs Fixes

• Fixed a major late-game memory leak
• Stuck Turn fix involving battle system in multiplayer
• Increase the opacity of the alpha on the un-owned grid
• Escape key now prompts the user if they are designing a ship, instead of instantly leaving the view.
• Added an option skip the upgrade notification on the starbases window.
• Fix some bad prerequisites some hidden minor race tech tree.
• Fix bad tech description for Technological Outreach tech, in the Torian Tech Tree.
• Added check in Galactic Events that prevent random crashes with event that pops up twice.  
• Fix bad prerequisite for Xeno Geology in the Arcean techtree.
• Fix bad prerequisite for Drengin Manufacturing Stimulus.
• Removed normal map corrections and Lean Maps from game as they didn't look good and were taking up too much space.
• Fixed false positive on culture flipping penalty in diplomacy window
• Fixed  bad normal map for merc textures.
• Fixed issue in Krynn tech tree causing the Coordination Temple to be hidden.
• Fixed some issues that were causing some of the techs at end of the tree to have the wrong cost calculated.
• Fix text wrapping on starbase window
• Fix for capstone alerts showing up for non-local player and for tech victory alerts showing up for non-tech victory items
• When vram is maxed out, the game will no longer generate a massive log file. 
• Increased the halo size on non-colonized planets 
• Added author fields for maps, factions and ships.
• Starbases will now notify the you that they need to be upgraded after being initially built.  
• Fixed double counting of trade routes for AI diplomacy purposes.
• Fixed late game crashes related to textures on large maps.
• Fixed an infrequent crash on loading large maps.
• Fixed bug that could cause the AI to see tiles in the opposite map position of where they were exploring.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the AI to reduce the priority weighting on colony ship production based on the # of targetable planets.
• If a player faction is set to random in the prefs.inifile, the quick-start tooltip will no longer display an invalid faction.
• Fixed an issue where if you changed the planetary spending wheel, the displayed. manufacturing time for improvements wasn't being updated at the same time.
• Clicking available projects tabs no longer resets the improvement cursor.
• Add ESC to close Ship Designer and Diplomacy screens.
• Starbases no longer incorrectly show the upgrade option when none avail.
• Fixed a crash related to the AI defying the UP.