2 de Setembro

Dev Update: Threats & Coercions, Star Claims, AI Memory, Spontaneous AI Offers, Spying Overhaul, Main Menu overhaul, and more!

We’ve just released the enormous V0.9.9.0 update, the last update before we hit the big V1.0 release and enter the iteration and refinement phase. This update includes a massive overhaul of the Diplomacy gameplay with an all-new favour system, new diplomatic advisors, several new technologies, the Threats and Coercions system, a new Star Claim feature, and significant improvements to the AI diplomacy algorithms. The Spying gameplay has been improved with a simpler deployment system (including Send Spy shortcut buttons), changes to the spy missions themselves, new technologies, and Spying being finally tied into the Diplomacy AI.

This update also completely revamps the main menu screen with new visuals and highly requested features such as a load game panel, finishes off the New Game screen with the ability to pick your race colour and crashed ship types, and completes the dropdown menu interface with the final Fleets menu to let you see all of your ships at a glance. We’ve also improved the galaxy generation algorithm, tweaked the Aquatic race balance, added our second-last set of building and infrastructure models, filled the remaining gaps in the diplomacy text, and more.

Read on for a full progress report on everything in the V0.9.9.0 update. This update is so big that we’ll be releasing information on what’s coming next in the big V1.0 release and beyond in a further update article soon!


The biggest change in this update by far is a massive iteration on the Diplomacy gameplay. Many of these new features and improvements were things we were planning to do after V1.0 or even drop from the game entirely to get it out the door quicker, but when developing the Diplomacy AI’s Memory system we decided to push ahead with them. You only get one shot to release a game and this was one of our biggest opportunities to do something new and exciting in the 4X genre, so we’re very glad we took it. We posted an update on this to the Steam forum that was positively received, and in particular we were absolutely blown away by follower EVIL’s incredibly kind words below. We hope it lives up to your expectations!





This was the final major piece of the diplomacy puzzle for us. It’s taken us some time to get here, but I hope you’ll agree that it was worth the wait! The Coercion panel in the Diplomacy screen is now active and you can use it to add diplomatic threats and demands to your deals that really take diplomacy to the next level. Races will also remember your recent threats and coercions in all future negotiations and will react accordingly. The weightings of threats may be tweaked as we balance test this gameplay, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Threats: Threats are a way to strong-arm another race into accepting a deal that would otherwise be in your favour. They add weight to a diplomatic offer and increase the chance the enemy race will accept, but will cause a -10% diplomatic penalty with that race for the next 100 turns and a minor penalty with the other races. Each threat can only be issued once every 50 turns, so you better make sure you get something useful in exchange.

• Threaten to Declare War: Threatening to declare war adds value to the diplomatic offer based on how big your military is compared to the enemy race’s (essentially, how afraid of war with you they are). This can be a gamble if the enemy’s chance of accepting the deal is less than 100%, as war will be declared immediately if they call your bluff and reject the deal.
• Threaten to Cancel Treaty: You can threaten to cancel any Alliance, Research Agreement, Trade Agreement, Sensor Treaty, or Peace Treaty you have with the enemy race. This will add value to the agreement depending on whether or not they get a lot of value out of that treaty. For example, threatening to cancel a peace treaty when your military is smaller than theirs isn’t much of a threat but doing so when your military is stronger will add a lot of weight to the deal. If they reject the proposal, the treaty will be cancelled immediately and you’ll take a diplomatic hit for both making the threat and breaking the treaty.

Coercions: Coercions are demands you can make other than just money and technologies, and are a great way to manipulate the other races. You can diplomatically isolate a race by convincing everyone to break their treaties with them, for example, or convince a warmongering race to lay off an ally of yours they’re at war with.

• Demand They Break Treaty: If the enemy race has any treaties with other races, you’ll be able to see them all here in the Threats & Coercions tab and can demand that they break those treaties. You’ll have to offer them something substantial in exchange or make a sufficiently large threat to make them agree. For example, you could bribe The United Colonies with a few technologies to break a Research treaty they have with the Z’loq or threaten to cancel all of your treaties with them if they don’t break off a Peace Treaty with the Kazzir.
• Demand They Stop Spying: If the enemy race has any active spies in your planets, this Coercion option will show up in the Threats & Coercions tab in the diplomacy screen and will let you know how many spies they have in your empire. This is a simple demand that the enemy stop spying on you, which will make them set all of their spies from active missions to the inactive “Hide” mode for the next 100 turns.
• Demand They Make Peace With Someone: If the enemy race is at war with another race, you’ll be able to demand that they make peace with them. If they agree, they’ll attempt to contact the other race and make a peace offering within several turns (except during the first 10 turns after a war declaration, when diplomatic contact is cut off). There’s no guarantee that the other race will accept their peace offer, but they will make what they consider to be a reasonable offer. If you can convince both sides in a war to make peace, a peace treaty is guaranteed to be signed. We’ve also added a new Peace Mediator technology that gives you a global +10 diplomatic boost with all races for 100 turns every time you mediate a peace treaty in this manner, so you can keep the whole galaxy at peace if that’s your plan.

Star Claims: Every fully uninhabited star system you’ve been to that has planets will show up in the Threats & Coercions tab, where you can issue a demand that the other race respect your territorial claim to it.

• Claim Star System: If you can get a race to agree to this demand, they will not send any colony ships to planets in that star system. Any colony ships that are already on their way there will not colonise on arrival and will soon select a new planet to colonise. Your claim is valid for 50 turns only and counts as a minor diplomatic threat, so it will carry a small diplomatic penalty for that 50 turns.
• AI Star Claims: If the AI is thinking about settling a planet in an uninhabited star system and it’s in your sensor range too, it will sometimes contact you to declare a claim on the system. Sometimes they’ll just issue the claim as a demand and sometimes they’ll include minor inducements like free money to convince you to accept. You can either accept the claim (which will of course make them like you more) or reject it and maybe try to grab the star for yourself. It’s also perfectly possible to accept a claim and then violate it by colonising a planet in that star system anyway, but this will cause a diplomatic penalty with the other races that they’ll remember for quite a long time.

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AI Memory / New Favour System:

The old diplomatic favour system had a point scale running from 0% to 100% representing how much each race likes you, and events such as wars or giving them gifts would permanently increase or decrease this rating. In practice, this meant you could just give an enemy race a bunch of gift technologies and they would like you forever unless you did something to decrease your rating again later, and they would never consider going to war with you.

In the new favour system, everyone starts with 50% favour to each other and this is modified based on your recent diplomatic history with the other race. Every time you do something that could change to your favour rating with another race, such as launching a surprise attack or giving them a technology gift, it’s recorded in that race’s list of AI Memory events. The value of each event decays slowly over around 100 to 200 turns, so you can’t just give them a gift once and coast on that goodwill forever. Decay also solves a problem in some other 4X games where empires can hold ancient grudges for the entire game even when it no longer makes sense.

• Positive memory events: Making a good impression in first contact, making fair deals, offering gifts, current treaties, and accepting the other race’s proposals.
• Negative memory events: Making a poor impression in first contact, proposing unfair deals or demands, breaking treaties, launching surprise attacks on their planets without declaring war, using biological warfare, using weapons banned by the Galactic Council, mistreating your citizens (e.g. picking a violent resolution to a riot random event or researching the Medical Testing technology), your spies on their planets being caught, violating a star claim agreement, and recent diplomatic threats made against them.

Spontaneous Diplomacy AI Offers:

The Diplomacy AI now periodically checks if the other empires in the game have something they want and constructs a diplomatic offer to try and get it. It will now trade for key technologies, barter any strategic resources it has for something worthwhile, and offer treaties when it’s advantageous to its empire. The AI will seek peace treaties and eventually alliances with empires that have powerful militaries, sensor treaties if it will help them expand their empire, and research and trade treaties with large enough friendly empires.

This new part of the diplomacy AI is influenced by the empire’s overarching strategic goal (Expand, Consolidate, Diplomacy, Defend, or Conquer), the randomly selected leader’s personality type, and your diplomatic history with the target race (e.g. if you have a reputation for breaking treaties). This means a race’s diplomatic strategy can naturally vary from game to game and depending on its situation. We’ve also implemented a new twist in the form of hidden pre-existing diplomatic motivations.

Two races can start the game already predisposed to liking each other or hating each other, which will modify the weight and duration of postitive and negative AI memory events and leads to some interesting gameplay. They can also really beg for peace when you’re kicking their ass, as below:



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Predestination’s AI is pretty complex, basing decisions on a huge range of factors including military strength, scientific progress, colonisation progress, and recent diplomatic dealings. One thing we realised while playing test games to evaluate the AI’s responses to diplomacy was that it was very helpful to be able to see some of this information and gauge whether the AI will accept an offer and what its motivations are. That’s where the three new diplomatic advisors come in:

• Scientific Advisor: This advisor evaluates the current diplomatic offer on the table and give you the estimated value of each side, a percentage chance that the other race will accept the deal, and a text recommendation.
• Diplomatic Advisor: This advisor gives you a breakdown of your current favour rating with the other race, showing the total contribution from each type of memory event and other factors such as legendary commanders and racial bonuses or penalties. This is a good way to see what the consequences of your actions are and keep track of grudges races still hold for your prior actions.
• Military Advisor: This advisor gives you the estimated military strength of both races’ fleets and planets. Comparing these is a handy way to see how likely they are to accept a Peace or Alliance treaty, and how much weight they’ll give to threats of declaring war etc. This advisor also tells you the race’s current strategic goal (Expand, Consolidate, Diplomacy, Defend or Conquer), which will also affect how they value certain diplomatic offers.

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While testing out the new diplomacy coercion options such as demanding that the enemy stop spying on you, we remembered that the AI doesn’t actually engage in spying. We also spotted some ways that the spying gameplay could be simplified and improved for both the AI and the player, so we took a little time to implement the spying AI system and iterate on the spying gameplay itself:

New Deployment System: To install a spy in an enemy planet, you previously had to build a ship with at least one Spy Pod module, fly it to the enemy system, pay 100 BC to install the spy, and then fly the ship home to refill it with new spies. The new system is much simpler and more consistent with the rest of the game. Now you just build single-use Spy Pod probes that work a lot like survey probes, fly them to the enemy system, and install the spy for free. The probe shows up as a Survey Probe on enemy sensors so they don’t know it’s a spy, and you may find it very suspicious if an enemy race starts sending survey probes into your systems.

Spying AI: The enemy races now build spy probes once they are able, pick out ideal target planets to install spies in, and send spies to infiltrate them. When spies arrive, the AI gets them to hide for a while to get their infiltration ratings up and then switches them to another mission. The AI picks which mission to use based on factors like how much they like the other race, how much research and other activity is happening on the planet, and whether they’re at war. If you threaten the AI to stop spying on you, they’ll put all of their spies on your planets into hiding until the threat expires.



Spy Mission Changes: There was a bit of a lack of consistency with the spy missions, as some had ongoing effects and some had no effect until they roll for success every 20 turns or so. We updated all the missions so that now each one has a passive effect that happens while the mission is ongoing and an active effect that rolls every 20 turns or so. You also now get a popup when a mission is successful and the AI will condemn you when they catch one of your spies. The updated missions are below:

• Hide: Passive is +1 infiltration rating each turn for all spies on the planet. Active mission is a chance every 40 turns to make contact with criminals on the planet, increasing the infiltration rating of all spies on the planet immediately by +50%. This mission has a base success bonus of +50 (very low chance of being caught), costs nothing, and is the default mission.
• Espionage: Passive steals 5% of the planets research output and adds it to your own empire. Active mission is a chance every 20 turns to steal important data from a computer system, from planetary maps and more research points to full working technologies. This mission has a base success bonus of +20 and costs 2 BC/turn.
• Sabotage: Passive reduces security coverage by 8,000 population, which can bring the planet’s security rating down below 100%. Active mission is a chance every 20 turns to shut down the planet’s farms, factories, or research labs for 10 turns. This mission has a base success bonus of +30 and costs 1 BC/turn.
• Terrorism: Passive kills 50 population each turn on the planet. Active mission is a chance every 20 turns to blow up buildings, infrastructure, ships in orbit, the space station, or even a whole city. This mission has a base success bonus of +50 and costs 1 BC/turn.
• Rebellion: Passive reduces the planet’s morale by -40%, which can bring it below 100% and may cause riots and other random events. Active mission is a chance every 20 turns to organise a riot that will cost the enemy money or permanently reduce the planet’s morale rating, making it easier for ground troops to capture. this mission has a base success bonus of +30 and costs 2 BC/turn.
• Assassination: Passive reduces the enemy’s planet leader bonus by 50%. Active mission is a chance every 20 turns to assassinate the planet leader. This mission has a base success bonus of +0, costs 2 BC/turn and can only be used on planets with an assigned planet leader.

New Spy Technologies: While implementing the new spy missions, we split the Troop Pods and Spy Pods back into two separate technologies and added several new ones to the Sociology tree. We’re planning to add a few more in the next update, so we’d love to hear any ideas you have for new spying technologies!

• Covert Coordination: Developing a system for coordinating the covert actions of your deployed spies allows you to add an extra spy to each enemy planet. Each additional spy on a planet contributes up to a +10% bonus to the success chance of missions depending on its infiltration rating.
• Deep Cover: Spies can be trained to prepare additional cover stories and false identities for any new operatives that will land on the planet. Spies will gain +2% infiltration rating per turn instead of 1%, and all spies deployed to a planet will share the same infiltration rating, drastically cutting down on infiltration time.

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Up until now, the main menu screen has been a simple background image with a few buttons on it. It wasn’t very visually appealing, you couldn’t edit any of the game options from it, and the only way to load a game was to use the Continue button that loaded your latest save game. There was also no way to select the singleplayer mission you wanted to play, which will be important as we add further chapters to the story. I’m happy to say that we’ve now totally revamped the main menu to solve all of these issues, and the new screen very closely resembles the mock-ups from the previous dev update.

• Visual Update: The screen now looks more appealing, with an animated rotating galaxy on the left hand side and a randomly generated planet on the right. We’re considering adding some kind of clouds to the planet to make it more animated, but this is of course a low priority.
• Options Menu: A new panel appears in the middle of the screen when you hit the Options menu, with a number of toggleable checkboxes and sliders for things like volume. These are all actually pulled directly from the Menu dropdown in the main game, so if we add new options there then they’ll also appear in the main screen options panel.
• Load Game: The new panel is also used for the Load Game panel, which shows all 8 save game slots and the Autosave in slot 9. The old Continue option has been added here with your latest save game being drawn in slot 10. Each save slot also shows the races in the game next to it, with eliminated races marked off.
• Story Missions: The new panel is similarly used to show a list of all of the singleplayer Story Missions in the game and let you launch one. There’s currently only one mission (The Kazzir Story, part of the Before the War story arc), and we’ll be adding more as quickly as possible. The aim is to hopefully have two full story arcs with 6 missions in each by launch. We’ve also added three rating stars to each mission on this part of the UI (Bronze, Silver and Gold), and in a future patch we’ll have a score screen after each mission to work out how well you did and let you know which of the three ratings you achieved. At the moment, completing the mission just assigns you the bronze rating.
• Challenge Maps: We’ve activated the Challenge Maps button, which uses the same UI as the Story Missions panel, but there are no challenge maps currently available. We’ll be adding some of these leading up to release and after release, and they’ll have the same three star rating system.

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We’ve now finished off the New Game Screen, which was missing some of the options players could select when creating a new sandbox mode game. The load time when clicking the Sandbox Mode button on the main screen has been eliminated, we’ve made some small UI improvements to the galaxy selection page, and all galaxy options are now saved to your Predestination.ini file and will be remembered the next time you load the game. The race selection page has also been renamed to Empire Options and now allows you to select your race’s colour and which crashed ship you want to start the game with:

• Science Vessel: Generates 20 RP/turn. On reaching the Space Exploration tech era, you unlock the Orbital Scanner ship module and get a Science Vessel that can scan planets.
• Asteroid Miner: Generates 25 Metal/turn. On reaching the Space Exploration tech era, you unlock the Asteroid Miner ship module and get an Asteroid Miner ship that produces +50 metal/turn.
• Colony Ship: Provides housing, food, health, and security for 2,000 additional population. On reaching the Space Exploration tech era, you unlock the Colony Module ship module and get a Colony Ship that can settle another planet.
• War Cruiser: Provides 50 Energy/turn. On reaching the Space Exploration tech era, you unlock the Laser Cannon, Laser Rifle, Mass Driver, and Electron Shield technologies and get a prototype warship with no FTL drive that can defend your home system and remains quite powerful into the mid-game.

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Galaxy Distribution: We’ve made some changes to the galaxy and nebula generation algorithm again, making stars a bit closer together and re-balancing the number of stars on each size level (32 for Tiny, 48 for Small, 64 for Medium, 96 for Large, 128 for Huge, and 180 for the new Colossal size). A few tweaks have been made to ensure every race has a certain minimum start quality, so races such as the Starforged and the Zloq who are highly sensitive to finding the right type of planet nearby should no longer get screwed over by map generation. You’ll still have to go exploring to find the ideal planets, but there’s now guaranteed to be a decent one nearby.

Nebula Tweaks: The nebula graphics have been tweaked a bit and should now look a bit better with more variation. Stars will also now more accurately detect that they’re inside a nebula and show that visually in the system window correctly, which will be a bigger deal as we add further gameplay differences for stars inside nebulae such as gas pockets during fleet combat. The Primordial galaxy age also now makes nebulae sprawl out across multiple stars for a more unique look, and Ancient galaxy age has more distinct nebulae.



Aquatic Race Tweaks: Someone pointed out that the Zloq can be kind of overpowered when it comes to producing metal as their Metallic Coral Reefs are massive and can harvest ore deposits on nearby land, so we’ve re-balanced reefs a little. They can still harvest ore on land, but pure Ocean worlds now start with less ore and Aquatic races can no longer research Carbonide Drills so their ore deposits are only worth +2 metal/turn. To compensate, the Metallic Coral Reef now automatically plants 4 additional coral deposits in ocean hexes in their area when built or 9 new deposits with the Pre-Seeded Reefs technology. This also applies to Fishing coral Reefs, which now start with additional fish deposits so you will no longer have to wait as long for fish growth.



Standalone Ship Designer: As part of the 3D Ship Designer Kickstarter campaign, we offered a standalone version of the 3D ship designer that let you save your designs to files. We deployed the first version of this last month and will be deploying an updated version soon and sending everyone out emails with the link.

Building Models: We’ve now added the models for the Coral Spire, Fishing Coral Reef, Metallic Coral Reef, Gas Harvester, ByteCoin Miner, Antivirus Tower, The Forge, and Heat Sink infrastructure / buildings. Several are still remaining to be completed, including the Factory, Research Lab, Food Processor, and Factory. We’ve also now added the models for biospheres, making it a lot easier to see which cities and infrastructure have biospheres and thus cost an extra +1 BC/turn to run.



More Diplomacy Text: As part of this update, we had to add new diplomatic responses for each race to cover new circumstances that can occur. The races all now have responses for when you accept a counter-offer they make, when you accept a deal they spontaneously suggested, when you reject a deal they spontaneously suggested, when you reject a demand they make of you, and when they catch your spy on their planets. We’ve also taken the opportunity to fix a number of text errors in the diplomacy text files.

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I’d like to thank everyone for reading through another colossal dev update article, I didn’t quite realise how much was in this patch until writing this up! A special thanks also to those providing feedback and bug reports during Early Access. As always, if you’re a Kickstarter backer and you’d like an early access key for Steam or to check out the latest DRM-free non-steam edition of the game, send us an email to earlyaccessrequest@brainandnerd.com with the email address you used on Kickstarter. The next wave of keys will be going out in the next day or two.

We’re eagre to get feedback on all of the new things in this update, so please do share your thoughts here, on the Steam forum, or directly via email to brendan@brainandnerd.com if you’d like to keep your thoughts and ideas private. Are the new threat and coercion options too heavily weighted or does the AI still drive a hard bargain? We’re also interested in any ideas you might have for new spying technologies and potentially for new endgame technologies and weapons in the Physics and Biology tech trees. The next major update will be the big V1.0 release, when we change gears from feature development to iteration and balancing. More information on what you can expect in V1.0 will be released in a further dev preview article soon!

Cheers,
— Brendan, Lead Developer

2 de Setembro

Patch Notes for V0.9.9.0 (Build ID: 2088062)

This Colossal update started out as a month-long incremental update to overhaul the main menu and fill in some missing Diplomacy gameplay. We took the opportunity to add some huge diplomacy features, revamp the diplomacy AI, Spying, and more. Please note that all of your older save game files will be broken in this new version and won't load. This is unfortunately necessary as the galaxy and race data just isn't compatible with the new format.

We've completely overhauled the main menu screen, replacing the boring background image with a new animated scene of a rotating galaxy and a planet on the right hand side, all rendered using the in-game tech. The new screen now seamlessly switches to the New Game screen and also includes a panel in the middle of the screen that pops up to be used for everything from options to picking a save game to load.

• Implemented Options menu. When the Options button is active, the panel in the middle of the screen now shows a series of toggleable checkboxes and sliders pulled directly from the Menu dropdown in the main game.
  
• Implemented Load Game menu. When the Load Game button is active, the panel in the middle of the screen now shows all eight of the save game slots, the autosave and a shortcut to the most recent save game. The races present in that save are drawn in little hexes next to each save.
  
• The Save Game directory now contains information on each race in the game and whether it has been eliminated. Older save game files may display this incorrectly, but new saves made after the patch will be fine.
  
• Implemented the Story Mode and Challenge Maps menus. When each button is active, the panel in the middle of the screen now shows a list of playable missions and indicates whether they are locked and whether you've achieved the bronze, silver, or gold rating.
  
• The UI for selecting Galaxy options when you create a new Sandbox game has been improved with new buttons and a header image.
  
• The Galaxy options you select when starting a new Sandbox game are now saved to the Predestination.ini file and remembered next time you start the game.
  
• The Race Select screen when creating a new Sandbox game has been renamed to Empire options and now has a header image
  
• You can now select what colour you want your empire to be on the Empire Options screen.
  
• You can now select which crashed ship type you want to start with on the Empire Options screen. The choices are Science Vessel, Asteroid Miner, Colony Ship, and War Cruiser.
  
  
  
  AI Memory System
• Added a positive AI Memory event for when you give the enemy a gift.
  
• Added a positive AI Memory event for when you make a fair deal in the enemy's favour.
  
• Added a positive AI Memory event for every time you accept a deal that they've proposed to you.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for Mistreating Citizens when you use violence to quell a riot random event on one of your planets. There's also a -10% Mistreating Citizens penalty if you have researched the Medical Testing technology and the other race hasn't.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for launching a surprise attack on a planet without declaring war first. This penalty is larger if you are violating a peace treaty at the same time.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for using a superweapon on a planet that has been banned by the Galactic Council, such as the Genesis Device or Stellar Converter.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for firing biological weapons at an enemy city that kills their population and troops.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for when your spy is caught on attempting the active part of its mission.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for when the enemy rejects a proposal weighted in your favour.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for when the enemy accepts a proposal even though it's weighted in your favour. This punishes you a bit for constantly making deals in your favour by making the enemy less receptive to your future offers.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for breaking a treaty. The penalty is increased if the treaty was that race's idea in the first place.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for any time you make a diplomatic threat using the new Threats and Coercions system. This forces you to use threats selectively as the enemy will be a bit less receptive for 100 turns.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for every time you reject a deal that they proposed to you.
  
• Added a negative AI Memory event for violating a star claim you've previously agreed to.
  
• Added a -50 diplomacy favour penalty for being at war. With enough positive counter-points, it's possible to have a positive rating with a race and still be at war, which will make them more likely to make peace.
  
• When you end a war by securing a peace treaty, the "Historic War" memory event is triggered, replacing the diplomacy favour penalty for being at war with a new -50 penalty that tapers off over the next 100 turns.
  
• Added an AI Memory event for First Contact that can be either positive or negative
  
• Implemented a new friendship / rivalry system to the Diplomacy AI. Races can now start the game with a predisposition toward liking or hating another empire in the game, decided at random during map generation. This modifies the value and duration of positive and negative memory events, having far reaching effects throughout the game.
  
• Factored game difficulty setting into the friendship / rivalry system to make Hard and Impossible mode harder.
  
• Factored game difficulty setting into the value of memory events to make the game naturally harder in Hard and Impossible mode, and promote more natural wars in those difficulty levels.
  
• Added a diplomacy favour bonus for each treaty based on the treaty's length, so that long-standing friendships are more valuable.
  
  
  
  Threats and Coercions:
  Threats are a way to strong-arm another race into accepting a deal that would otherwise be in your favour. They add weight to a diplomatic offer, but if the enemy rejects your proposal then the threat is carried out automatically. Coercions are a way to manipulate another race into doing your bidding, but you have to add a lot of value to the deal to get them to accept it.
  
• Activated the Coercions panel in the Diplomacy screen to contain all threats and coercions.
  
• Added Threaten Declare War feature. If the deal is rejected, war is automatically declared.
  
• Added Threaten Cancel Treaty feature. All existing treaties you have with the enemy race show up here.
  
• Added Demand Break Treaty feature. All treaties the enemy race has with other races show up here, and you can demand that they break them.
  
• Added Demand Make Peace feature. All wars the enemy is involved in will appear here and you can demand that they make peace. If they accept, they'll construct a peace offering.
  
• Added Demand Stop Spying feature. If the enemy is spying on any of your planets, you can demand that they stop. This will make them all switch from their active mission to the Hide mission for the duration of the coercion (50 turns).
  
• Added Star Claim feature. All uninhabited star systems within range of both empires will show up here, and you can demand they leave the system alone. The AI will respect your star claims for 50 turns.
  
• Implemented peace mediation mechanic. When both races in a war have been convinced to make peace, the peace agreement is automatically accepted.
  
• Implemented Peace Mediator technology, giving a +10% global diplomacy bonus every time you mediate a successful peace treaty between two other races.
  
• Implemented Star Claim AI: Whenever an AI race picks a valuable planet to send a colony ship or survey ship to, they will often contact any nearby races and inform them that the star is claimed by them.
  
• Modified the Threat Psychology technology. It now adds +50% to the value of threats and coercions in diplomatic deals.
  
  
  
  Spying Gameplay:
• Implemented the Covert Coordination technology. Allows you to add an extra spy to each enemy planet.
  
• Implemented the Deep Cover technology. All spies gain an additional +1 infiltration rating per turn when in Hide mode. When installing a second spy on a planet, it inherits the current spy's infiltration rating.
  
• Changed the spy bonus and chance roll algorithms. The first spy adds 50% of its infiltration rating to its offensive spy score and each additional spy adds 10% of its infiltration rating.
  
• Split the Drop Pods technology into two separate technologies: Spy Pod and Troop Pod. Also re-organised the Sociology tree to add the new spying technologies as a small sub-tree.
  
• Implemented Spying AI. This builds spy pods when the technology is available, selects enemy planets that would be ideal to spy on, and sends spies to infiltrate those planets. The spy hides until it has a high infiltration rating and then switches to an active mission depending on what mission would be best on that planet.
  
• Spies now cost 0 to install. Instead, you now build single use stealth probes to carry spies to enemy planets that work like survey probes.
  
• The Send Spy button when you right click on an enemy planet in the system window is now fully functional. It will light up if you have any idle spy pods in your empire, and clicking it will dispatch one to that planet. The same button can be found on the Planets menu's Exploration panel next to enemy planets.
  
• The Spy Satellite now costs 500 metal and 100 BC and the description has been fixed so it now correctly says it gives a +50 spying bonus for 100 turns.
  
• The Spy Pod now fits only on a probe hull and is limited to one per ship. It costs 1000 metal and 200 BC, which replaces the cost of installing spies.
  
• Renamed Hack Computers mission to Espionage and added a passive component that steals 5% of the planet's research each turn.
  
• Renamed Sabotage Computers mission to Sabotage.
  
• Renamed Plant Bombs mission to Terrorism and added a passive component that kills 50 population each turn.
  
• Renamed Incite Civil Unrest mission to Rebellion.
  
• Tweaked the difficulty and success chance of all of the missions and changed the success chance algorithm. Each mission now has a base chance, onto which all positive and negative bonuses are applied to reach the final odds. Total bonuses are +0 to +110 defensive and +0 to +110 offensive
  
• Modified the chance of being caught when executing a diplomatic mission. There's now a 25% chance of being caught on failure and a 10% chance of being caught anyway if you were going to be successful. This means there's no guarantee you won't be caught even if you have a massive spying bonus.
  
  
  
  Diplomacy AI & Improvement:
• Added new Diplomacy text for when spies are caught or you reject an offer they've made to you
  
• The AI race leaders can now sometimes take an immediate liking or disliking to another empire that will affect the weighting they give to positive and negative interactions. If a race decides they don't like you then you may have to work harder to avoid war, and if they like you then you can expect more favourable diplomatic deals.
  
• Implemented Spontaneous Offer AI. The Diplomacy AI now periodically checks if the other empires in the game have something they want and constructs a diplomatic offer to try and get it. It will now trade for key technologies, barter any strategic resources it has for something worthwhile, and offer treaties when it's advantageous to its empire.
  
• Implemented complex Spontaneous diplomacy AI that constructs realistic diplomatic offers and demands depending on a wide range of factors.
  
• Added modifiers to the Diplomacy AI to account for the race's overarching strategic goal (Expand, Consolidate, Diplomacy, Defend, or Conquer)
  
• Added modifiers to account for the AI's randomly selected leader personality type and your diplomatic history with the target race.
  
• Added a special warning if you are caught spying on another race and have previously agreed not to spy on them. This causes a larger diplomatic hit than a standard caught spy.
  
• Added a new Reject Deal button and moved the UI around to accomodate it. This button appears when the AI contacts you to make an offer.
  
• Implemented new Scientific Advisor report: Evaluates the current diplomatic offer on the table and give you the estimated value of each side, a percentage chance that the other race will accept the deal, and a recommendation.
  
• Implemented new Diplomatic Advisor: Gives you a breakdown of your current favour rating with the other race, showing the total contribution from each type of memory event and other factors such as legendary commanders and racial bonuses or penalties.
  
• Implemented new Military Advisor: Gives you the estimated military strength of both races' fleets and planets, and tells you the race's current strategic goal (Expand, Consolidate, Diplomacy, Defend or Conquer).
  
  
  
  Buildings / Infrastructure:
• Added model for the Coral Spire, the central Aquatic city building.
  
• Added model for The Forge, the central Robotic city building.
  
• Added model for the Heat Sink, a piece of Robotic infrastructure.
  
• Added model for the Gas Harvester, a piece of infrastructure for all races.
  
• Added model for the Metallic Coral Reef, a piece of Aquatic infrastructure.
  
• Added model for the Fishing Coral Reef, a piece of Aquatic infrastructure.
  
• Added model for the infrastructure and city biospheres. It should now be clear whenever something is surrounded by a biosphere, which costs an additional 1 BC/turn to run.
  
• Added models for the Barren, Molten and Toxic biospheres with different colours of glass (Barren:Gray, Molten: Red, Toxic: Purple).
  
• Added model for the ByteCoin Miner, a piece of Robotic infrastructure.
  
• Added model for the Antivirus Tower, a Robotic building.
  
• Increased the Damaged Mining Barge's metal output from 20/turn to 25/turn.
  
• Increased the power output of the Fossil Fuel Power Plant from 50/turn to 75/turn so that the start of the game is less restricted.
  
• Increased the power output of the Nuclear Power Plant from 200/turn to 250/turn to make it more effective.
  
• Increased the power output of the Biofuel Reactor from 100/turn to 150/turn
  
• Changed the Heat Sink building from a city building to a piece of planetary infrastructure. It now provides +10% research and metal production across the planet but takes up an infrastructure slot and must be built in an Ice environment.
  
• Coral reefs now automatically plant 4 free deposits of the resource they grow (Coral for the Metallic Coral Reef and Fish for the Fishing Coral Reef) in empty hexes of the right environment. This is in addition to the deposits already there. The bonus is increased to 9 additional deposits with the Pre-Seeded Reefs technology.
  
• The Auxiliary Hatchery reptilian building has been changed to increase population growth rate by 5% at the cost of 250 food per turn.
  
• Removed the Auxiliary Forge robotic building has been removed as it kind of went against the design of the Robotic races by providing population growth.
  
  
  
  Misc Features / Changes:
• Implemented the Fleets dropdown menu. This new dropdown shows all of your current fleets and provides shortcuts to open them. Moving ships have their destinations shown and stationary ships are labled as "Standing Fleet" with the system of origin displayed.
  
• Ocean and Swamp planets no longer start with poorer mineral rolls. Instead, they generate part of their minerals as ore on land and part as coral in the oceans. This makes these planet types more viable for Aquatic races and less for other races.
  
• Strategic resources such as Neodymium, Helium-3, and Coffee Beans will now always be found surrounded by other resources of the same type (e.g. Neodymium in an ore deposit and Coffee in a fertile soil deposit) rather than sitting out on their own.
  
• Added the new Robotic technology "Upgrade: Cooling Vents" that increases research on all Ice type planets by 10%.
  
• Renamed "Fuel Pellet Conservation" robotic technology to "Upgrade: Insulation" and increased its bonus from +25% fuel pellet production to +50%!
  
• Improved the Biogenic Research technology. It now provides +25% research on all Toxic planets and no longer requires that you are researching the Biology & Geology field.
  
• Temporal Rifts now have 10-14 turns before they open rather than 8-12, so it should be easier to reach them in time.
  
• Adjusted Galaxy Size parameters to provide more options: Tiny is still 32 stars, Small is 48 (down from 64), Medium is 64 (down from 96), Large is 96 (down from 128), Huge is 128 (down from 180), and a new Colossal size is 180.
  
• Adjusted Galaxy nebula generation algorithm to allow much larger nebulae without letting them overlap. Also improved the nebula detection algorithm so stars will now much more accurately determine whether they are inside one or not.
  
• Adjusted the nebula graphics a bit, they should now be more visually appealing and there's a bigger difference between each Galaxy Age option. Ancient now looks round and washed out, while Primordial now sprawls across multiple star systems.
  
• Improved the load speed on the Main Game screen's galaxy generation process.
  
• Galaxies should now be more compact, with fewer stars lying far from the main body and less chance of getting stuck in a corner without anywhere good to expand to.
  
• The Robotic race Forge option to construct new citizens now builds in smaller batches, allowing you to build 250 at a time rather than forcing you to build chunks of 1,000.
  
• Added a new taskbar notification for when a Revenant fleet appears from a temporal rift but is going after another race.
  
• The sensor sphere graphics now draw spheres for all of your planets and those belonging to races you have a sensor treaty with, so it should now be more obvious where you can travel.
  
• Aquatic races no longer have access to the Carbonide Drills technology, so they only get a maximum of +2/turn from each Ore deposit. This helps even off the disparity between the Ore Refinery and Metallic Coral Reef.
  
• Removed the Diplomatic Computer technology from the Robotic research tree as we've since
  
• The Genetic Enhancement: Happy technology has been increased from +5% empire-wide morale to +10%, and the description has been corrected on the research screen.
  
• The Research dropdown menu now draws the building, infrastructure or ship part in a technology in the bottom left panel when you mouse over the technology.
  
• Added biosphere graphics to the Research dropdown menu when you mouseover those technologies.
  
• The Diplomacy dropdown menu now displays a dotted line for Peace Treaty, Alliance Treaty, or War next to the line denoting how much two races like each other, so it no longer covers it up.
  
  
  
  Bugfixes:
• Exploring a conquered enemy homeworld should no longer allow you to find free cargo and escape pods. This is intended to be something a race finds as it explores its homeworld in the Pre-Warp era.
  
• Fixed bugs causing a number of Robotic technologies to be labled as non-racial.
  
• Fixed a bug allowing the AI to trade away the endgame technologies that lead up to the scientific victory. These technologies must be researched by the player.
  
• Fixed a number of text errors in the Research trees and diplomacy text
  
• Fixed several Strategic Resource popups that had their text cut off because it was too long.
  
• Added some automatic memory recovery to the Fleet Combat explosion code so that it should no longer crash with an Out Of Memory error and will instead stall for a few seconds when it runs out of memory. This is a temporary fix, and more rigorous solution is in the works for a future update.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Ship Captains and Planet Leaders to be stuck at level 9 and never make it to level 10.
  
• Fixed a bug causing Ship Captains and Planet Leaders with diplomacy bonuses to provide massively over-inflated bonuses.
  
• Fixed some galaxy generation bugs causing too many stars to generate on Tiny maps and the gaps between stars to be too large on the Large and Huge maps.
  
• Fixed a bug causing ship designs to not be deleted from the save game files when you save over an old slot. In rare cases, this could cause an obscure crash.
  
• Fixed an incredibly unlikely crash that could happen if you rapidly clicked on the Music volume slider a whole bunch of times. Seriously.
  
• Fixed a bug with the sliders in the options menu that caused the notch to be drawn in the wrong place if you used the scrollwheel to change the slider rather than clicking.
  
• Fixed a serious Planet AI bug that could cause the AI to build too much of one thing or another when there's a lack of staff to run all the infrastructure on a planet or buildings haven't finished building. The AI now examines the planet as if everything is built and working before making its move. This results in more consistent behaviour, and planets should no longer fail to become established due to overproduction of food or energy.
  
• Fixed a bug causing the completion status of your singleplayer missions to not be saved. This wasn't noticeable because we didn't have any way to see the completion status, but now we've added the Bronze / Silver / Gold icons on the main game screen.
  
• Fixed a bug with the system window's scrollbar being the wrong height for the number of ships in the system sometimes.
  
• Fixed a display bug where some menus would disappear while opening and closing the System window.
  
• Fixed a bug where starbases wouldn't build ships that cost 0 command points when at the command point limit, and wouldn't build ships that use 1 point when they have 1 left.
  
• Fixed a display bug on the Planet Screen in the city stats window where you can see the infrastructure attached to a city. Shipyards were accidentally drawing 100 times larger on this panel than they should have.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could see the cloaked Revenant planet using the Planet dropdown menu's Exploration tab before it decloaked and revealed itself.
  
• Fixed a bug in the United Colonies diplomacy text where it never replaced %latestweapontech% with the name of their latest weapons technology.
  
• Fixed a bug where the coloured segments for colonised star systems could become misaligned because it was measuring them as non-bold text but displaying them as bold text.
  
• The System window should now correctly update when you hit End Turn and a new ship is built. Previously it didn't update until closed and opened again
  
• Attempted a fix for the problem where the AI fires weapons that are on cooldown in Fleet Combat. Didn't seem to work, more testing required.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Auto button in Fleet Combat could start switched on if the previous combat ended with it switched on.
  
• Fixed a bug where tooltips could draw on the First Contact diplomacy screen and wouldn't disappear until you left the screen.
  
• When the Diplomacy AI fails to form a counter-proposal after rejecting one of your proposals, the offer is now properly reset back to a blank deal. Previously the AI would add elements to the offer to attempt to form a counter-offer and then reject your deal if it wasn't good enough, but the added elements remained on-screen.
  
• The Diplomacy AI now correctly decides to cut off contact due to you repeatedly contacting them with poor deals. Previously it would decide to cut off contact but not actually end the current diplomatic session until you clicked on the Treaties tab.
  
• Fixed a bug causing mouse clicks to go through the popup dialog box with the new mouse handler.
  
• The Soldier Hatchery now correctly provides +10 security (enough for 2000 population) rather than +2.
  
• Fixed a bug with some missing diplomacy text for the Z'loq
  
• Fixed the robotic technology Bytanium Battle Armour being put in the wrong place in the research trees.
  
• Fixed a number of file exceptions when loading images that don't have any corresponding mouseover image. This should speed up some of the screen loading.
  
  As always, these are as complete patch notes as it's possible for us to make but there may be some small things missing from them. Please continue to send in your crash and bug reports as you play V0.9.9.0 and we'll release follow-up patches to fix any major errors. Check out the latest Dev Update in the News section (to be posted shortly following this) for a clear breakdown of everything in this update.
  
  Cheers,
  -- Brendan, Lead Developer