v0.2.0b


*** The underlying Rising Stars version has been updated to 1.2.1. Only bug fixes and a few minor features have been carried over.

*** The scale of the game has been fine-tuned.

*** Some elements of relativistic physics have been implemented: the speed of light is now a determined in-game constant and nothing can go beyond it except while using FTL means. Acceleration is also adversely affected by the current speed relative to the speed of light.

*** New subsystems have been added to provide a (costly) way to mitigate long colony ship travel times and / or open options to create independent space-based settlements.

*** Resource variety on gas giants has been increased.

*** Some mechanics of the Star Children and Mechanoid lifestyles have been overhauled, both to adequately fit them in the balance of the mod and to increase their flavor.

*** This version introduces a new type of Project for populated settlements, Policies, which allows to buy specific influence cards at will in exchange for high costs and a long build time, equivalent to 3 budget cycles.

• Artificial Intelligence
  
  - AIs now build starports in systems where they own 3 planets or more.
  - AIs using hyperdrives, jumpdrives or fling beacons now build more FTL storage when they can safely do so.
  - AIs using hyperdrives or jumpdrives now refrain from sublight movement when the ETA is unreasonable. The ETA calculations take relativistic speeds into account.
  - AIs may now engage hyperdrives more frequently, including for in-system movement.
  
  
• Buildings
  
  - Mining Complex now also increases the pressure given by native Iron by 2 and Coal by 1.
  - Healthcare Complex base maintenance cost is now 15k (down from 20k).
  - Ancient Collectors can now be built on all gas and ice giants but can no longer produce asteroid pressure.
  - Ancient Cores can no longer be built on ice giants.
  - The Flux trait no longer gives access to the FTL Breeder Reactor (see Orbitals).
  - Reverted FTL Breeder Reactor to vanilla costs.
  - Updated Factory graphics.
  
  
• FTL
  
  - Sublight has been regretfully sacrificed on the altar of balance. It will be reincarnated in a future version.
  - Increased hyperdrive speed by a factor of 2. The total factor compared to vanilla is now 40.
  - Increased slipstream optimal range by a factor of 2 and decreased inaccuracy by a factor of 5. The total increase factor compared to vanilla are now 10 for optimal range and 5 for inaccuracy.
  - Slipstream cost has been reverted to vanilla value.
  - Increased jumpdrive range by a factor of 2. The total factor compared to vanilla is now 20.
  - Reduced flux jump cooldown by a factor of 20. The total factor compared to vanilla is now 40.
  
  
• Gameplay
  
  - Relativistic physics now affect sublight speed by applying the Lorentz factor to acceleration.
  The closer the velocity of a ship is to the speed of light, the lesser acceleration has an actual effect on this ship. This also means that sublight speed can never reach, let alone exceed, the speed of light.
  - The speed of light constant, 'c', has been defined in the game. For practical reasons regarding scale versus playability, it has arbitrarily been set to 1000 u/s (multiplied by system spacing scale).
  - The ETA calculation display for colonization orders now take relativistic speeds into account.
  - Fixed bugs where the 'Toggle Laser Propulsion Beam' and 'Repair' abilities would not work properly after loading a previous save.
  - Changed projects with no labor cost to not consume labor storage if available.
  - Fixed a bug where planet resource icons would not appear immediately when entering an unexplored system with Legacy Exploration Mode off.
  - The Atroans race preset now has Flux instead of Sublight as their FTL method.
  
  
• Game Options
  
  - Added Star Scale, Planet Scale and System Spacing Scale. These options apply a multiplier to the base scale of stars, planets and system spacing, respectively. All drive speeds, weapon ranges and FTL costs are scaled with system spacing.
  It is strongly advised to set the same multiplier for stars and planets and a multiplier at least equal for system spacing in order to avoid object collisions in the generated universe.
  WARNING: Stars scaled above 1 require longer loading times and may cause extensive stutters while zooming in.
  
  
• Lifestyles
  
  - Star Children motherships no longer have population growth and labor generation simply by virtue of being motherships, but these characteristics are now provided by their subsystems.
  - Since the population of a mothership is now hosted in Living Quarters, the maximum population a mothership can support depends of the size of said subsystem.
  - Default mothership designs have been updated to reflect the gameplay changes for Star Children and also as a tutorial on how to design motherships.
  - Mechanoids now natively generate 0.08 FTL/s and gain 100 FTL storage for each planet level on every owned planet.
  - Fixed Mechanoids incorrectly starting with 1 less Labor generation on their homeworld than they should.
  
  
• Orbitals
  
  - Added Dryport. Reduces income penalty of Level 0 planets by 30k. Increases income of Level 1 planets by 20k + 10k per additional Level. Build and maintenance costs of 200k and 20k, respectively. Cannot be built by Ancient and Extragalactic lifesyles.
  - Added Processing Center Dryport module. Adds 1 pressure capacity to the planet the Dryport is in orbit of. Build and maintenance costs of 100k and 5k, respectively.
  - Added Space Hook Dryport module, exclusive to Star Children. Increases the construction speed of support ships on this planet by 40%. Adds 1 money generation per Planet Level starting from Level 1 if a Starport is present in the system. Build cost of 750k. Also costs 1k Ore to build.
  - Starports now also increase the production of Labor, Influence, Energy and Research on all owned planets in the system by 10% for Star Children lifestyles.
  - Fling beacon maintenance cost is now 150k (down from 200k).
  - Increased the range of the 'Telescope' abilities on telescope arrays and quantum telescope arrays to 800k units (up from 400k units) and 2M units (up from 1M units), respectively. The range of this ability increases with the system spacing scale setting. Decreased the energy cost by half.
  - Increased the range of the 'Toggle Laser Propulsion Beam' ability on phased array laser drives to 700k units (up from 350k units). The range of this ability increases with the system spacing scale setting.
  - Star Children lifestyles with the Flux trait no longer have access to a special FTL Storage orbital generating FTL (see below).
  - FTL Actuators now generate 0.5 FTL/s instead of 0.15 FTL/s when the Flux trait is taken.
  
  
• Planets
  
  - Added a new Policy: Call To Arms. Yields one Patriotic Surge influence card. Build cost of 250k. Also cost 5 Influence. Cannot be built by Pacifist lifestyles.
  - Added a new Policy: Crop Regulation. Yields one Harvest influence card. Build cost of 600k. Also costs 20 Influence. Requires a Grain native resource. Cannot be built by Mechanoid and Ancient lifestyles.
  - Added a new Policy: Economic Endeavor. Yields one Profiteering influence card. Build cost of 200k. Also costs 15 Influence.
  - Added a new Policy: Scholarship Support. Yields one Enhance influence card. Build cost of 450k. Also costs 10 Influence.
  - Added 2 new sites of interest.
  - Slowed down moon rotation and orbit speeds.
  - Moon bases built by the related Foundation trait now consumes the available moon base slot on the homeworld.
  - Gas giants now always have a non-exportable Common Gases resource in addition to their primary resource, similarly to Water on ice giants.
  - Fixed a bug where moon bases built by the related Foundation trait would only have a size of 5x5 instead of 6x6.
  
  
• Research
  
  - Added the Advanced Gimbals node. Unlocks the Advanced Gimbals weapon modification.
  - Added the Closed Ecological Life Support node. Unlocks the Habitat Module subsystem for use on flagships and stations. Unavailable to Mechanoid, Star Children and Ancient lifestyles.
  - Added the Actuator Optimization node, exclusive to Mechanoids. Increases planet FTL generation per Level by 25%.
  - Added the Ultra Modularization node, exclusive to Star Children. Increases the Population supported by Living Quarters by 20%.
  - Added the Ship-Mounted Replicators node, exclusive to Ancients. Unlocks the Replicator subsystem for use on flagships.
  
  
• Resources
  
  - Added Common Gases, a new tier 0 resource found on gas giants only. Adds 2 Energy pressure. Cannot be exported.
  - Added Ammonia, a new tier 1 resource found on gas giants only. Adds 1 Energy and 1 Defense pressures. Counts as a Food resource if the consuming planet has a Grain or Fruit native resource, once per planet.
  - Added Metallic Gases, a new scalable resource found on gas giants only. Increases Labor generation and civilian Energy pressure by 0%/5%/10%/30%/60%/120%/200%. Cannot be exported.
  - Reverted Rare Gases acceleration bonus to 0%/5%/10%/30%/60%/120%/200% (up from 0%/2.5%/5%/10%/30%/60%/120%).
  - Slightly increased the frequency of Water on planets.
  - Moved the guaranteed Neutronium asteroid closer to the home system.
  - Fixed a bug where Level 1 Water resources from ice giants could fill either Water requirements or Level requirements to level a planet up, but not both at the same time.
  - Lowered the priority of Ore in the planet resource list. This allows primary resources to keep being displayed first in the planet resource list, but it is now required to export Ore by right-clicking the target planet in all cases.
  - Fixed a bug where Ore would replace the primary native resource of a planet in some cases.
  - Fixed FTL giving 0.5 FTL/s more than intended at level 3 and higher.
  - Updated Rare Gases icon.
  
  
• Systems
  
  - Increased default system spacing by a factor of 2 (300,000 units). The total factor compared to vanilla is now around 46.
  - Greatly increased the average number of planets per system.
  - Decreased base scale of ships by a factor of 0.25.
  
  
• Subsystems
  
  - Increased the range of the 'Toggle Laser Propulsion Beam' ability on phased array laser drives to 700k units (up from 350k units).
  - Added Colonization Pods. Can colonize a planet without commissioning civilian colonizers, with the benefits of imperial-class equipment such as extra protection or FTL systems. Settlers must be embarked manually from a planet up to the maximum population storage. One billion settlers is dropped for each colonized planet. Significant amounts of Control are required to support the settlers. Requires a significant amount of space. Additional maintenance cost once pods are loaded is higher than the equivalent amount of civilian colonizers.
  - Added Habitat Module. Can support population. The population will grow and provide income as if on a planet, but at a greatly reduced rate. Can share population with Colonization Pods, allowing to colonize planets with the population already on board. Significant amounts of Control are required to support the population. Requires a significant amount of space.
  - Added Living Quarters, exclusive to Star Children. As masters of life among the stars, Star Children have this more efficient version of the Habitat Module unlocked at game start.
  - Added Replicator, exclusive to Ancients. Has the same abilities as an Orbital Replicator, with the benefits of imperial-class equipment such as extra protection or FTL systems. Must cover at least two thirds of the entire ship. Costs decrease with size.
  - Added Machine Shop. Provides Labor and Labor Storage. Gains Labor from Metallurgy research. Can build ships, orbitals, asteroid bases and terraform planets. Provides much less Labor than a Construction Bay of equivalent size.
  - Mothership Hull no longer provides free population, labor generation, support command and cargo storage and instead provides bonuses to these values.
  - Mothership Hull now requires a minimum size of 3000 as well as Living Quarters and a Machine Shop.
  - Added Advanced Gimbals, a laser and adaptive laser modification. Increases fire arc by 50%. Decreases maximum duration of the beam by 20% and increases cooldown by 1.5s.
  - Added Population design stat for Colonization Pods, Habitat Modules and Living Quarters.
  - Added Population Income design stat for Habitat Modules and Living Quarters.
  - Added Labor Storage design stat for Ore Processors and Machine Shops.
  
  
• User Interface
  
  - Changed the display to show distances starting from 1,000 units and beyond with metric prefixes rather than in units only when targeting a destination for FTL orders.
  This system was chosen over realistic units (astronomical units, parsecs or even light years) because they cannot be realistically represented in the game, and thus don't really make sense.
  - Added current speed both in u/s and relative to the speed of light (as a factor of c) in the ship info popup. Orbital velocity is displayed as well.
  - Added a strategic icon for remnant pickups in order for them to remain easily visible when zoomed out at much greater distances than vanilla.