Hi again everyone! Another medium-to-largish patch that has some fun stuff like new tank models for Earth armies as well as across-the-board AI and balance improvements and bugfixes galore. The AI should handle threats and shortages better. The balance improvements are tricky but the goal of all the changes, buffs and nerfs alike, is to make your various tools worth what you pay to acquire them in the game.

We've got more AI improvements in combat and the strategy layer in the pipeline and hope to get them out on our Beta branches soon.

Thanks for sticking with us as we learn and improve our way through EA and move this game toward one-point-oh.

This build should be compatible with saves from earlier 0.4 builds. Balance changes may sometimes take your campaign in a new direction.

Patch notes for builds 0.4.27 through 0.4.38

Features and Content

- Lots of new tank models for tech levels 2 to 7, with modern/historical tanks generally being tied to the nations that fielded them, and variant future tanks.

- New victory conditions requiring enemy destruction of habs at various locations and fleets of a certain strength, in place of proportional fleet power calculations. Testing out on Humanity First only for feedback, will expand it to other factions if

- Removed the artificial angular acceleration cap for ships. Rotational velocity is now capped by human tolerances for centripetal acceleration. Ships will generally rotate faster now. Ships now require dV to be spent to rotate. Pending: High acceleration turns (and burns) will pause damage control operations, plus a setting to limit accelerations to enable damcon to continue and reduce DV spend on rotation.
- Implemented Vector Thrusters ship utility model, bonus thrust for rotation
- In Combat when doing high-g turns Damage Control will be disabled.

- Added T1 antimatter hab production module and project that only requires containment but also a plasma confinement tech.
- Added Mission to Venus tech, effect. Considerably cheaper than Mission to Mercury for some earlier Solar powered goodness.
- Added bridge projects for Tibet-Mandalay, Chennai-Sri Lanka, Scotland-Northern Ireland
- Implemented Cyclotron ship utility model, bonus power to particle weapons

Balance

- Increase chance of officers promoting after their first promotion

- Updated AI Withdraw behaviour to increase the likelihood of withdrawing ships surviving. Apparently Ben is British today

- Significant rework with balance, bug fixes, and VFX work on AOE weapons (nukes, shaped charge nukes, antimatter weapons) in combat, including updates to damage to ships, projectiles, and projectiles. AOE weapons will now detonate when shot down by all PD (this represents them detecting the threat and detonating to cause damage before destruction, not the nuke going off in an uncontrolled fashion); AOE for nukes is still small at our scaling so don't expect huge changes in their performance, just a much better handling overall. Modeling damage as a point source rather than an explosion if the beam is narrow (which it always is as current config), and adding a small exotics cost to the styx missile (the best).

- Adjusted Earth research formula. Earth now produces about 25% more research overall at campaign start.
- t3 labs have base research reduced to 15 and their projects now have additional prereqs. project costs increased.
- research university now require populous space body. projects have additional prereqs.
- increased support costs for operations and command centers. command center project has additional prereqs.
- increased soc sci lab power cost to 4, soc sci rc to 16, soc sci institute to 48
- civilian module power draw reduced
- added new (lower than “populous”) planetary population threshold to build certain hab modules -- T1 social science lab, T1 broadcast outlet, and T2 research campus now require 10,000 local population to build sted 50,000 when away from Earth system.
- increased quarters module crew to 50

- Antimatter spiker antimatter cost reduced by factor of 10.
- Increased range on human t3 plasma cannon. Increased chipping on all plasma weapons to 80%, leaning into their intended role as armor degrading weapons.
- Updates to combat autoresolve mechanics

- Further changes to region defenses. The 'forces from adjacent regions with no fighting' bonus is capped at 10% of miltech, and reduced proportionally by the number of adjacent regions with fighting.
- Armies now fight better than they had been when damaged.
- capped army damage from a single hit during bombardment based on weapon type
- capped chances of knocking out surface to defense laser with orbital bombardment per strike, in lieu of a better fix of hit points and degrading capability that I'll get to in the future
- offensive lasers score halved in ship threat calculation to better account for armor reduction effects
- increased mass of siege coilers and slightly reduced rate of fire
- increased project costs for Mk2 and Mk3 coilgun projects
- Some tech tree changes to make administration algorithms more of an info science capstone, feeding into some other late-game techs. Some project changes as a result.
- Nuclear-powered missiles now require some of the compact solid core power plants to be developed as a prereq, instead of Solid Core fission
- Restored claims from Greater Austronesia on southern Australian regions because I got wore down. I'm sticking to my guns on Switzerland being only in Europe as a part of Great Europa so get off my lawn. Anyway this probably won't change campaigns where the GA project has already been developed.
- Changes to Earth victory conditions for several factions to remove proportion of control points controlled to proportion of GDP controlled
- Restored difficulty and campaign pace modifiers to based exotics salvage rate
- ICF7 and Converter Torch are going to be more expensive in an attempt to make other propulsion systems more relevant.

- reduced impact of land size on occupation time somewhat. Tech superiority will now improve pace of occupation more.
- Megafauna can no longer control other megafauna for the SPOILER; a regular SPOILER army is required


AI
- Significant work on fleet-management and goal AI.
- Work on AI propellant conservation and handling of shortages.

Performance
- Fixes to late game AI army path calculations. This was causing significant slowdowns during late game terrestrial warfare with lots of AI armies involved.
- removed verbose councilor video logging

UI
- army path home operation
- mass army path home operation
- Added warnings for really low acceleration in ship designer

Modding
- added a TIGlobalConfig value, homeCountryISOCodeOverride, to override your system settings so your first councilor is generated from a ingame nation assigned that country code

Bug fixes
A (critical bugs)
- 4533 - fixed another case of placeholder ui showing during trajectory change when opening other large ui panels that could lead to crash if interacted with
- 4533 - fixed crash when closing fleet panel while a spacebody was selected during forced trajectory change
- fix for rare nre in AnimationEvent_Fire
- Fixed a rare crash coming from radiators going out of scope when extending or retracting
- SpaceObjectPositioning bugfix : Ignore null elements. This avoids race condition NRE when elements haven't been cleaned up yet.
- adding nullchecks to take a crack at #4538 (rare crash when cancelling fleet repair midway)
- AlienHabPlanner.ManageHabGoals() : enforcing one station per space body. Disabling redundant base building code.
- Fix issue where councilor aborted mission twice on CheckAndChase fail, causing double refund of mission spend and dual notifications.
- fix for crash when allied armies are fighting some armies but not others in an allied region when they are not a party to the invasion of that region #4493
- GetBorderingWaterBodies() bugfix : regions with a defined CoastRegion but are not onTheWater could cause NREs in AI pathing code (this is when trying to reach arctic regions by sea during winter)
- Modding / 4485 - fix crash when adding entries at the end of tiglobalconfig.json
- fix crash in ai on ai combat related to pursuit and ship destruction (email report), related fix maintain primary AI fleet when they break up for combat and re-merge when primary fleet has a join goal with some other fleet
- #4443: Fix crash in AI logic that expects player fleet and player has no fleet and is only defending with station.
- fix hab module pd weapon selection filters, causing crash when somehow missiles were selected
- 4444 - fix for infinite loop in TextMeshPro.GenerateTextMesh when first displaying a tooltip with a line break
- fixed crash due to missing components on new particle collider station module prefab
- FactionGoal_AttackWithFleet.OnGoalComplete() bugfix : NRE if followup attack goal is invalid
- save repair for when we add new techs, like mission to venus, that can cause problems if a follow-on tech was already completed in the save. The prereqs will be granted automatically.
- 4462: fix crash when an army is selected in the middle of an autoresolve and the fleet in the autoresolve has to change course, associated issue with operation bar bug when prompting trajectory change
- Fix / workaround bizarre crash when Unity finds the wrong object when setting up the asset image canvas. Should be a performance improvement as well.
- changed some AI coroutines to master dummy object so they will be shut down immediately on a new load. This should fix a one-off crash reported when a user tried to load a new game while the AI was in the middle of thinking.
- 4227 - fixed memory leak from audio in disabled shipweaponviscontrollers
- 4225 - fixed crash with narrative events when target was deleted before event resolved.
- fix crash when AIReaction in arrivefleet removes a fleet, and then is checked later for rallies (4385)
- Fix crash when a ship that has only component armor takes an internal hit directed to utility modules
- 4362 - fixed crash when renaming player owned megafauna army
- Fix crash when trying to move army from Turkey when Turkish straits are closed
- Attempt fix a non reproducible crash that seems to occur when a fleet recently involved in combat cancels repairs.
- Fix for missile null ref crash
- 4390 - fixed audio memory leaks from projectile impacts causing issues in longer sessions with multiple combats

B (Serious bug)
- fix issue with all armies go home that was stopping some armies prematurely on their trip
- fix logic error that was causing nuclear missiles to ignore hab PD defenses
- Simplify GetEnemyArmiesInRegion to address 4516 (armies occupying when they oppose enemy armies)
- fix 4555, bad propaganda results on critical failure on several missions when having high persuasion
- UpdatePowerManagement() bugfix : mines do not power before less important modules when "turn everything on" is selected. Issue #4543
- Addressing percent sign character display issue for Japanese localization.
- PredictMaximumMaintainenceCostsPerDay() : take into account queued and under construction ships
- AlienHabPlanner.ManageHabGoals() : added limits to how many fuel bases may be built
- HumanHabPlanner.ManageFoundGoals() bugfix : space body selection for frontier bases was missing a large number of intended candidates. Selection should be much improved now.
- SelectTrajectoryAsync() bugfix : only allow use of reserve dv if mayUseReserveDV is true
- HumanHabPlanner.ManageMineNetwork() : call this on load. When loading a save where an AI faction has a large number of mines, they will all be turned on, potentially causing a huge mine network penalty until the AI runs its hab management code. Calling ManageMineNetwork() on load forces them to deal with the penalty immediately.
- Bugfix #4492: Prevent fleet teleportation when arriving at highly eccentric ad-hoc orbits. Previously, we used a binary search to find a "close enough" mean anomaly to the fleet's position on arrival. This failed if the eccentricity was too high, and has been replaced with a direct calculation that is more precise and faster.
- Partial bugfix #4469: Ship designer now correctly reads minimum DV needed if the sample transfer cannot be completed. It doesn't yet display the minimum acceleration needed if that is too low.
- Fixed infiltrated money chain triggering after event chain had been resolved.
- Rewrote the Narrative Event Conditions for Ancient Explorers to correctly target only Mars, Europa, and Enceladus
- flipped info tech requirements for T2 and T3 admin hab modules to fix top-tier info requirement being for T2
- remove mag confinement techniques from particle collider module (redundant with later advances)
- Fix: Singleton viruses to life sciences category
- Fix some particle weapon config
- fix incorrect weightedbuildmaterials for alien exotic radiator that was causing them to underpay slightly #4527
- Attempt fix AA using boost to found habs
- Fix error in autoresolve where an attacking ship's projectiles get shot down by their own PD as opposed to the enemy side's PD.
- Attempt fix bugged calculation that was overcharging DV for rotational velocity change by 20x (bug since 0.4.29). Stupid math
- OperationCanvasController bugfix : army pathing issues. There were a number of problems when trying to queue army paths after a recent change. This all stemmed from the first step of a journey being handled differently then the subsequent queued steps due to legacy reasons which have now been rectified.
- OperationCanvasController bugfix : Incorrect duration and target labels for composite army paths
- ArmyPathController bugfix : looping paths weren't rendered properly.
- TIArmyState.CanGetTo() bugfix : mixing up onTheWater with isCoastal. This would only impact regions with seasonal ocean access.
- fix incorrect Burkina Faso-Kano, Nigeria adjacency with BF-Togo-Benin adjacency
- slight rounding of a calculated bombardment value that seemed to be just outside of allowed range and was preventing an Earth bombardment from doing anything
- armies on journeys will now display final destination and full journey time in select operation UI
- fix issue where canceling a repair operation while an earlier one was in progress would complete the earlier one early #4459
- fix bad math logic in calculating annex region times for high-tech armies versus low-tech regions, tnx redwah
- fix logic error in updating nation's sustainability when a region is absorbed
- fix misclassification of motherships as "medium" sized ships in certain places
- fix research formula and mission resource bonus that used log 10 instead of log 2 as intended in one part of the calculations. New bug in 0.4.29.
- Flag bridge utility module is one per ship, as intended
- fix 4433, utility modules missing nobles and amat costs. adjusted mass and cost of amat spiker (the source of the problem) but it should be the same. new for 0.4.29
- Bugfix #4366: Fleets would abort instantly after accepting a trajcetory if the destination fleet was about to maneuver such that it couldn't be caught. This would be fine if the aborting fleet knew that the destination fleet was about to maneuver, but the aliens do not post their tactical plans publically. Fixed: fleets accept transfers that they think will be completable, and only abort when an enemy destination fleet launches. I've also added various safeties to ensure that we use the later of a trajectory's assigned or launch times (since trajectories can be inherited by other fleets who were chasing them).
- Fixed a bug where projectiles could cause the waypoint overlap UI to appear
- multiple fixes related to counting allied armies in a region and whether they are current war allies or just regular old allies. Prevents an issue where allies not at war can prevent a region from being occupied.
- Fixed a bug that allowed the radiator explosion object to hang around after combat.
- Bugfix #4356: Fleets with incredibly low acceleration (due to engine damage) will fail to transfer because the required microthrust spirals would exceed 2 years. If the acceleration is high enough to avoid microthrusting around the Sun for the entire duration of the transfer, we threw a "code path not implemented" error. We now return an estimate of the minimum needed acceleration to make the trip within the timeframe.
- Bugfix #4356-B: There was an inconsistency on whether we knew that a destination fleet had launched a new trajectory or not. Orbit phasing transfers to a destination fleet that is launching immediately will, of course, fail. The error was that other transfers weren't attempted, causing a "code path not implemented" transfer failure instead of finding actual intercepts. That's now fixed.
- Laser engines and now cyclotrons apply some bonus power to pure PD weapons. The text previously indicated they supplied a bonus put they in fact did not.
- Fixed an issue with events causing national stats such as Cohesion and Inequality increasing when the event intends the values to decrease
- If a ship is performing a combat maneuver and runs out of dV the combat maneuver is canceled
- Fixed event bugs that pointed to specific map regions that were deprecated in the 0.4 build, and added various new regions appropriate to those events
- Fixed a bug with Cops and Robbers event. Event can no longer trigger on a councilor that is currently detained
- Fixed a bug with General Strike and other coheasion and population scaling events that would cause the tooltip outcome values to be inconsistant with the results values
- Fixed a bug with Ancient Explorers events where event could trigger on invalid space bodies
- Fix 4405: Bridge project eco bonuses.
- fix 4400 MC usage in the UI not updated immediately when a mine-network management tech is completed
- fix 4411 fix racer and swarm missiles salvo fire timing
- fix 4402 armies teleporting across the Black Sea when fleeing while the Turkish strait is closed
- fix 4398 allied armies not at war will no longer reduce occupations
- added safety code to recalculating angular acceleration to avoid div/0 error
- fix 4397, cross-regional defense bonus added incorrectly when an enemy army was in the neighboring region with no occupation taking place
- Enforced consistent rule that boost and money can only be used for resupply/repair in the Earth system. Will iterate improvements.
- Resupply/Rearm operation will use boost correctly now. Only allowed when in the Earth system. (Not working for repairs yet)
- Fixed a few issues with the Infiltrated event chain that could cause the chain never to resolve.
- fix army AI getting stuck when it's trying to get out of a battle with other armies of the same faction
- 4221 - fix for duplicate objective notifications
- Combat AI: - Fixed a bug with withdraw code that made AI ships too skiddish in attempting to retreat when their weapons were damaged. Ships will try to hold on longer and allow for Damage Control to work.
- 4383 - fixed mouse clicks going through UI panels and selecting habs while interacting with dropdowns
- SimulateCombat() bugfix : Only consider remaining combatants for offensive/defensive weapon frequency computation
- SimulateCombat() bugfix : missile weapons do not receive additional impact velocity. Thanks to redwah for finding this mistake.
- SimulateCombat() bugfix : salvo weapons fire too much. Thanks to redwah for finding this mistake.
- SimulateCombat() bugfix : Offensive vs defensive use of weapons was inconsistent (duplicate commit). In particular, a weapon could be used simultaneously for defense AND offense, making it basically twice as good. Or, it could be used for neither, making it useless. This happened randomly.
- fix scaling on Katonda Kuiper Belt Object, should be modelScale = 0.5 in TISpaceBodyTemplate.json
- 4360 - fixed hab screen ui displaying incorrect hab when resolving notifications for a hab when hab screen was already opened
- 4346 - fixed MC usage not updating correctly when refit completes
- correct bad logic in thruster chance to kill missile code
- armies owned by warring nations but the same faction will now fight each other if there are no other armies to fight in the same region. (4353) This fixes some cases where invasions got stuck.
- fix some additional issues with SPOILER-controlled megafauna and AI attempts to fight it.
- fix some issues with army UI path proposals and TIOperationTemplate.DeployArmyOperation() allowed destinations getting out of sync

C (Minor bug)
- Various tyops
- fix UI text for new hull's maximum armor thickness (units issue)
- fix 4489, cons bonus icon display
- Move creation of occupation markers to startup to hide the 1.8 second initialization of said markers, which were previously occurring the first time a mission targeted a region
- Remove duplicate utility module entries for alien cruiser. Not sure if it caused any issues or not.
- Minor typo addressed in Alien Flora project
- fix a case where notification close button was being removed due to pending prompt (not directly springing from the current notification)
- changed Ratnakaran States region centerpoint so zooming in will get triangle on the screen
- fix overactive button detection in the precombat canvas
- typo in titechtemplate
- 4444 - change mission canvas description text overflow mode from scrollrect to overflow
- fix typo in flag bridge description
- fix issue with Melbourne region illustration_2 that was causing white background
- fixed fps widget not rendering text due to unused font
- 4422 - fixed text overflow in hab detail screen
- 4424 - fixed operation bar updating and opening when player is handling a forced trajectory change
- added some fmod isvalid checks before interacting with events
- added audio cleanup for spaceobjectcontroller
- 4122 - retain displayed class when clearing ship designer
- 4320 - fixed small ui overlap in councilor recruit ui panel
- fixed bad syntax in TISpaceShipTemplate.json
- 3951: Added 10 z to the combat directional light gameobject of the SolModel prefab. This wasn't a bug, really; the shadows were being cast properly from the light source for the combat, but it was always at z = 0 which led to this weird-looking thing on start. Shadows will still be cast but the angle should make it a little less common.
- Fix 4406: Loss of cohesion when below 5 from narrative event is highlighted in Green rather than Red in Cohesion tooltip.
- fix 4403 (unused code)
- fix 4395, faction currentKnownCouncilors excluding known detained councilors
- fixed poor text contrast in hab screen when selecting habs
- updated read/write setting on type 2 human ship set meshes, fix missing sparks in construction visualization
- fix garble in Plasma weapon description
- 4335 - fixed some incorrectly capitalized faction names in ui
- fixed bad loc tag for TIArmyTemplate.displayNameWithArticle.AlienInvader
- 4371 - fixed shipyard filter not updating properly when leaving refit tab
- fix bad lat/long value for new Atlanta region that was causing sea transport to sometimes go via New Orleans sted Charleston