Stellar Monarch 2 News

This version is intended to address various points raised in the "What do you find confusing" forum topic. While I tried to explain various concepts, I got a few times an idea how to better implement the thing that was confusing. For example governors' statistics were adjusted heavily (instead of an unintuitive security rating boost now competence of governors simply adds a bonus to cities output and infrastructure points generation). There are now more descriptive tooltips and extended manual with more details. In addition, several changes were made which were at the border between a feature and a fix (mostly related to aliens). The last thing is an improvement of the interface, mostly aimed at better visibility on high resolutions (bigger fonts and dynamic sized fonts where possible). Overall, there is a bunch of changes but all those are very intuitive.


- [feature] Mechatrons implemented (can activate at an unspecified turn).

- [misc] Updated in-game help (added Rebellion chapter and listed all effects of all statistics of personnel).
- [misc] Arachnians will no longer wake up if their homeworld is lost, they will also instantly hibernate in such case.
- [misc] CyberMarch will become inactive (no more offensive operations) if their capital is lost.
- [misc] Governor's Competence grants a bonus to cities output and infrastructure points generation. Governor's Competence no longer affects Security rating of the planet.
- [misc] Fleets Loyalty affects SpecOps during rebellion.

- [balance] Extra defenses for CyberMarch near their capital. Also increased their power.

- [interface] Help improved (back buttons on all pages, bigger default font size).
- [interface] Ministry expansion naming unified (in some tooltips it was called level, in some called expansion and in some extension). Also added a better explanation that it increases effective Competence of the minister.
- [interface] Improved Aliens overview (list peace/war status, bigger fonts, more colors, etc).
- [interface] Bigger font size on Aliens description screen (will auto shrink to a smaller one if does not fit on the screen).
- [interface] Bigger font size on aliens portrait name (will auto shrink to a smaller one if does not fit).
- [interface] Bigger font size on Resources and Astronomy minimap planet highlight.
- [interface] Governor's tooltip lists all effects of all statistics.

- [fix] Charisma of governors had no effect whatsoever. Now it's added properly as a source of happiness from government. For clarity, the happiness from government on the happiness tooltip was split into two sources, one for Court and one for Governors.
- [fix] CyberMarch marking all planets as ready for conquest after losing their capital.
- [fix] Incorrect display of research points from blue sun on the Astronomy minimap tooltip.

This version is intended to address the early v1.00 feedback, mostly related to things which are confusing when playing the first time and some minor features. In addition AI was fine-tuned and it contains one fix which altogether will make Admirals and Imperial High Command react to your orders better. There was also reset modernizations button added.


- [feature] Reset modernizations option (on ships screen) to let experiment freely with ships setup.

- [misc] Emergency reinforcements for planets under invasion made a higher priority than conquest/retake lost planet orders.
- [misc] Improved Admirals & High Command AI to better prioritize targets.

- [interface] Made granting honorary titles more intuitive (now all noble born have "Grant honorary title" button, but greyed out if ineligible, also with a tooltip explaining who and why).
- [interface] Rename noble house option (on houses screen).
- [interface] Help supports colored "bold" text.

- [fix] Admirals AI not sending emergency reinforcements to planets under ground invasion.
- [fix] Small spelling fixes.


Reminders
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Also, if you have a moment to leave a Steam review of the game it would be appreciated. It makes a big difference to an indie developer like me. Thanks!

Do you remember the last hotfix version, when I was telling how a fix to a bug introduces another bug? Well, it seems I was way more right I could ever dream to be. The fix to a fix introduced another bug, which this hotfix is fixing. Fortunately, it's a purely cosmetic bug.

Yes... That's such a ridiculous story I will be surely telling it on the local dev meetings and to my grandchildren. No doubt.

- [fix] The previous version fix of versioning fix broke versioning in another way (yes, I know how it sounds, but that's what happened), which made it incorrectly display Early Access mode and other obsolete notices from the E.A. period.

Maybe you have heard the saying that each fix of a bug introduces two more bugs. It kind of happened with the v1.00.1 hotfix. The cure proved to be be worse than the disease and caused crashed to desktop in some cases. This hotfix fixes the bug introduced in the previous hotfix and auto corrects old saves as well. So you should not notice difference, only if play a very old save, you will have the v1.00.1 fix disabled, but since it was a cosmetic thing it's acceptable. Also a few more tiny fixes and tweaks were introduced.

Note that this bug might have caused also other symptoms, not listed above (those bugs which cause crash to desktop are the most deadly in terms of side effects). So if you encountered other strange problems recently, there are decent odds this patch fixes it as well.

- [interface] Made it more clear that F.E.D. percentage of shares is what counts, not the shares quantity (adjusted tooltips to also display the shares controlled percentage, renamed "fiefs income" to "F.E.D. shares income", renamed phrase "number of shares controlled" to "percentage of shares controlled" in all tooltips).

- [fix] Crash when loading saves started in v1.00 and then clicking Espionage/BattleSim on same races.
- [fix] Incorrect number of nukes produced when producing those.

Version 1.00.1 released

What a release would be without a hotfix for an unexpected bug? Exactly. So, here it is, a tiny path which fixes one small measly but annoying bug.

- [fix] Excessive proxy ships (leftovers from E.A.), each technology should unlock 2 per ship hulls, not 3 hulls. Note that this fix affects only games stared after this path. But it's not critical since it's mostly a cosmetic one (just don't use the proxy ships, those are clearly marked as such, those are inferior anyway).