2.8.9 - Late Night Epiphany

Ever tinker with something and come to a sudden realization? Well it's 1am here and I just did.

This mod requires the Apocalypse DLC. The ship cannot be built without the player (single player) or host (multiplayer) having that DLC. This has been noted in the Workshop using the Required DLC functionality since the first upload of the 2.0 series of this mod.

The techs, however, could still be learned. That is now amended, so hopefully those occasional "I can't build the ship" reports I get stop because this was probably why. The Augur is a reskinned Colossus, so having Apocalypse is mandatory and that isn't my decision to make or overturn. Sorry.

2.8.8 - Embrace the Chisel

Game version compatibility bumped to 3.9.* after a run-through of the patch notes and a quick check of all the functions in a 3.9.1 game. Literal only change is changing the 8 to a 9 in the meta file, so this will continue to be fine on people holding on to 3.8.* games.

2.8.7

Localization for Simplified Chinese updated (to include additions/changes with the Ripper and other things that were tweaked during that patch). Patch provided courtesy of MyresMkG.

2.8.6 Weighty Imaginings

Updated the science weights to match the new 3.8 leader system alongside a bit of QoL.

Having a leader with Field Manipulation Expertise, Particle Expertise, any rank of Spark of Genius, any rank of Maniacal, or has the Curator trait will increase the chances of seeing the normal and rare Hypertraversal techs. Field Manipulation and Particle Expertise do not increase chances of the dangerous techs (Isolator, Ripper). This bonus is now only applied once for having any of these traits (it used to stack before), but it's now larger.

The Scholarium bonus now applies to Hypertraversal techs also. A bit late, yes.

The cost of a few techs have been lowered inside their tiers. The additional star type techs and the Advanced Bore should take less research than before. I am debating what to do with the star type techs in the future as it feels a bit much to me.

The bonuses from completing the Discovery Tradition and from Technological Ascendancy still apply as before.

The initial Hypertraversal tech will now have an increasing chance to show up starting from the 35th game year and that will increase again at the 40th and 50th game years. There is no penalty prior to this, only bonuses. No other Hypertraversal techs have this bonus.

2.8.5 - And Then We Doubled It

Well, not quite doubled it. The Connector list has been expanded to 64 options. The range remains the same (60 euclidean units from the system, half again the max distance of system creation) but this should cover all but the most crazily dense galaxies.

Updated for Gemini 3.8.1. Ship limits are now additive rather than overwriting, so we only add the Augur to the ship limit list for default empires now. Compatibility with other empire types will still need patching.

2.8.4 - Consistency

Hey kids, you know when you have a great idea like, oh, halving the cost of truncator/connector operations and you set it all up in the localization files and then never actually go into scripted_vars and change the costs?

Yeah, so Truncator/Connector are supposed to cost 2500 and not 5000 and have said so for a few months. Now they actually have the cost fixed. Oops.

Version 2.8.3 - Primitive Solutions

Bumped version to 3.7 so mod loaders don't complain.

Fixed primitive bore/dowse to use new pre-FTL initializer. This will not currently create the new hive mind pre-FTL civilization type as I need to assess how I want that to work.

Version 2.8.2 - Local Fix

Fixed the part where I was dumb and messed up the localisation files for everything other than English/Simplified Chinese.

(Note to self: the header on each of those files has to match the language in the file name, don't just copy-paste the English file wholesale and call it a day.)

Version 2.8.1 - Less Silliness

Ripper tech now sets the flag that you know what a wormhole is if you somehow managed to get Wormhole Stabilization without reaching that step, so you can use your wormholes right away.

Version 2.8.0 - Rip and Tear

This version introduces a new Augur operation, the Hyperspace Ripper, which rips a wormhole to an undiscovered, distant system in a specified direction for the price of 75000 energy credits. As wormholes are burdensome things where subspace is concerned, this operation will only work in systems that do not already have a wormhole present. This technology requires the Advanced Bore, Jump Drives, Tachyon Sensors, and Wormhole Stabilization.

Being more specific, this is an extra long range Advanced Bore that makes a wormhole instead of a hyperlane connection. Going by the internal numbers, a normal Dowse or Bore will create a system within 10 and 40 units. The Connector will connect systems within 60 units. In contrast, the Ripper's new system will be between 100 and 200 units away.

The one wormhole per system thing is a Stellaris limitation that I enforce. If I let you keep firing it, it'd just reconnect the one wormhole and orphan the previous destination(s), so I've even gone to the trouble of making sure you can't do multiples of these even if you have multiple operations queued up in the same system. Really, just don't do it (and probably don't plop one of these in the system where you keep your EHOF if you want to be really safe).