Stellar Monarch 2 News

This version has the new game screen redesigned and finished. You can select core ruleset, extra rules, customize emperor's name/sex, spend dynasty points, etc. A few things are still missing (like customizing the royal house crest) but majority of it is finished. Next, introduced a new mechanic, the Grand Imperial Banquet. It basically allows you to invite all heads of the noble house in bulk and then chat with them on various topic (chat individually or make toasts to address certain issues). Please give me feedback what you think about this mechanic. It's a bit rough right now but definitely within the mood of being the emperor. Next is a small thing which will become very important later, centralization mechanic which is right now an experimental feature (needs to be manually enabled). I also added a bunch of much needed new random events and cleaned up & finished the existing ones (except the dreaded ministerial events which are still unfinished). Overall, with this version I tried to finish some basic stuff that was long due and to take a step back and reflect on the gameplay and see what needs redesign or a different approach.


- [feature] Banquet can be organized which allows to invite heads of all noble houses and discuss various things (there is a button on Audience screen for this). It's expensive and time consuming (Emperor's focus points) but it allows to strike deals and smooth rough edges with relations.
- [feature] New game screen was redesigned and there is now "ruleset selector" which replaced the old rules checkboxes. Basically, now you select what options you want in bulk, tailored to a specific experience you desire (like if you want more/less randomness and control).
- [feature] Option to play without manual technologies selection (add to queue is disable then and the technology is selected by imperial researchers). This is to simulate even more "ruling from the heights of the imperial throne" premise since some people requested to have less control over such mundane tasks. You need to select "Hands off" ruleset to enable this option.
- [feature] New game screen now has "extra rules" which you can select in any combination you wish. Most of those make the game harder.
- [feature] 5 extra rules (Surrounded by Idiots, Surrounded by Traitors, Surrounded by Ugly, Surrounded by Thieves, Complex Laws).
- [feature] New game screen "Start Dynasty" button works now. It allows you to customize the Emperor/Empress (name, sex, portrait). Note that house customization (like crest selection) is not implemented yet but it will be in the same place.
- [feature] Start Dynasty allows you to select various dynastic perks (very similar to the ones from Stellar Monarch if you played the prequel). Unused dynasty points are converted to extra Stability (which is also done automatically if you select "Quick start").
- [feature] Experimental feature (needs to be enabled by going to Options and checking "Enable experimental features"): Centralization. It will make a new parameter to be displayed on the top bar and this mechanic is going to be a very important one in future. Right now there is no way to increase Centralization level and it does not affect Coronation Ceremony, that's why it's marked as experimental.

- [content] Many more audience events. Also finished unfinished events (except ministries related ones).
- [content] Added banquet preparations related events (musicians, cooks, poets, etc offering their services).

- [misc] Renamed game modes to scenarios.
- [misc] Military ranks slight cleanup.
- [misc] Audience events are properly randomized now (in the previous versions some of the events appeared in a fixed order).

- [balance] Increased cost of laws.

- [interface] Top menu tooltips cleaned up, unified and improved.
- [interface] Bureaucracy tooltip on finances screen shows details what are the sources of bureaucracy bonuses/penalties.
- [interface] Escape key properly closes all windows in all parts of the game while always retaining/restoring the higher level window.

- [fix] Various small bugfixes.


Compatibility note: INCOMPATIBLE, this version will not work with old saves (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

This version focuses on ministries and character statistics. The character stats were explained so poorly that even I could not make heads and tails out of them sometimes, so I reviewed all those tooltips and stats rules, clarified them and simplified. In addition extra modifiers to stats were added. Now it should be much more clear what affects courtiers and what ministers. The second big thing is bonuses from ministries. Now each ministry provides a bonus each turn, listed conveniently on the ministry tab. The calculations of ministry efficiency were redesigned and simplified (now everything is just a bonus or a penalty to competence of the minister making it all more logical). The last thing was redesign of the high command screen with a clear separation of support staff and line admirals.


- [feature] Ministries now provide additional bonuses based on the ministry level like savings, rebels control, corruption reduction, etc in addition to adjusting the chance for a good/bad audience event. Those bonuses are quite powerful (for example a very competent Minister of Treasury can provide savings equal up to half of the bureaucracy costs), so now competent Ministers can be very valuable. Note that Foreign Affairs ministry provide no bonus yet.
- [feature] House relations affect loyalty of the character supporting that house (as explained in Loyalty stat tooltip).
- [feature] House with Old Aristocracy tradition grants +1 Charisma bonus to all characters that are their supporters.
- [feature] Officer Corps reform increases all officers salaries.
- [feature] Added Colonels and Political officers to Fleets.
- [feature] All military personnel (High Command and Fleet officers) can be interacted with (they have just one option right now).
- [feature] Able to fire officers from the royal house fleet or from any fleet if the officer's corps reform has been passed. Also political officers can always be fired from any fleet.

- [misc] High command redesign (portraits moved to right, simplified, removed unused Ground forces tab).
- [misc] No traits for high command staff and political officers.
- [misc] High command staff ranks renamed to "Staff" (which make it more clear who is the staff in the high command dealing with military plans and logistics and who is the line admiral leading a fleet to battle).
- [misc] As of this version all reforms are finished (they might be fine-tuned later but all their existing effects work).

- [content] Some reports got new art.

- [interface] Ministers got special hats, color coded to their ministry, to make them more prominent on the screen.
- [interface] Greatly improved characters tooltips (more intuitive, more informative, more colorful, more beautiful).
- [interface] Beautified and improved all tooltips on the Ministry screen.


Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.50+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

This is a quite unusual version, its purpose is to consolidate things and remove the weak parts. It has few new features but a lot of tinkering with existing ones. Basically, I took a look at all the mechanics and content and decided to get rid of some, permanently or temporarily, or redesign those. Noble Houses got rearranged, their positions, crests, traditions, etc, all to feel them more coherent and to allow me to build later a sort of story and background for those, like some are warlike, some come from an old aristocracy and some are upstart industrial mongers. Reforms and laws were tinkered with as well. Finished two long ago promised features, rare resources and science perks. In addition ministries were redesigned.


- [feature] Rare resources (effects, descriptions, random generation). Note that those are somewhat bleak, definitely to be fine-tuned later. Also description style of those differs a lot, it's because I wanted to test which style would be better. So it's more like a first iteration of rare resources, not the final thing.
- [feature] Science perks (for now only one science perk per field is implemented but those fully work).
- [feature] Ministries redesigned. Now the level of ministry is Competence of Minister modified by various bonuses and penalties. Which is more clear and logical. Also, the size of the Empire drastically affects the penalties, so you need to expand ministry offices in order to keep up with growing Empire or face growing government inefficiency.

- [removed] Commerce reform removed (felt that exactly 7 reforms would be the best).
- [removed] Voltar, Fungoids, Automated Worlds removed (probably will be back later, once there are more fleshed out).
- [removed] Crime concept removed.
- [removed] Consumer goods concept removed.

- [misc] Voting Census reform replaced with Imperial Protocol Reform which allows more focus points for the Emperor.
- [misc] Moved Former Ministers Act law effect to Administration reform and the law was removed.
- [misc] Noble Houses crests and colors rearranged (to make it feel better, with left size more peaceful and right side more warlike, etc).
- [misc] Noble Houses traditions rearrangement (now there are 3 primary and 6 secondary traditions).
- [misc] Xeno races decolonize worlds they conquered.
- [misc] Technical: optimization of the executable (a minor thing).
- [misc] Technical: game version now includes build type (Release/Steam/GOG).

- [balance] Noble Houses max squadrons are now mostly based on the number of cities in their fiefs (uncapped) which is more intuitive and logical.
- [balance] Officer Corps Reform grants +25% max squadrons (instead of flat +20 squadrons).

- [content] More laws. Some were added some were removed.

- [interface] Ministers have all unique colors making them easier to identify (ministers' bars colors, tabs on ministry screen, laws related to ministry colors, etc). Also Advisor and Inspector positions got unique colors.
- [interface] Personnel tooltips have colored stats (Competence/Loyalty/Charisma) with a description how much above/below the average the value is.
- [interface] Cleaned up and beautified diplomacy left side section.
- [interface] Reform button shows progress bar if a reform is in progress.

- [fix] Order of reforms changes after initiating a reform bug.
- [fix] Infinite prototype promotions bug.
- [fix] Small non critical memory overwrites (inside data structures only so most likely overwriting non critical stuff) also additional memory safeguards and cleanup.


Compatibility note: INCOMPATIBLE, this version will not work with old saves (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).

Hotfix. Just one tiny non critical yet important memory related fix.

This is the last version from the v0.4x stage and it's focusing on finishing things introduced in the previous version and on cleanup. Mostly finetuning ships and aliens diplomacy/intelligence screen redesign plus some smaller features you requested. It has no spectacular features but makes the overall experience much nicer by smoothing many rough edges.


- [feature] Ships now can have abilities which affect this ship only (decoys, armor piercing beam weapons, etc). All existing ship hulls from older saves will auto adjust to those on game load.
- [feature] AI techs improve over time (at different pace, depending on race).
- [feature] Rebels have technological level cloned from imperial techs and then reduced a bit (because rebels have no access to the top most advanced imperial techs immediately).

- [removed] Option to set border priorities via intelligence screen (it should be done via High Command screen).
- [removed] Outpost construction speed bonus from communication range removed (needless complexity for marginal decision making since at the beginning you have all potential planets for colonization in good comm range anyway).

- [misc] Ship abilities cleanup (removed useless ones and added more cool ones).

- [balance] Rebalanced all ships.

- [content] All ships have unique abilities.
- [content] All ships have unique names and custom descriptions.
- [content] Extended alien races descriptions.

- [interface] Diplomacy/Intelligence screen redesign and cleanup. Also added an option to cancel the truce (cancelling a truce is free at any time).
- [interface] Truce is displayed instead of War if truce is in effect.
- [interface] Battle simulator action logs have mini tooltips (HP/Shields/Armor/etc) for ship names in the action log.
- [interface] Fleets details screen got improved selector for quick access to other fleets (later the same selector will be added for aliens screen and ships screen).
- [interface] Communication towers tooltip list ALL effects (people are confused) {Cities output bonus, loyalty of planets, tactical bonus}.
- [interface] Ship details screen list all ship stats (very crude, without tooltips for now).
- [interface] Hull origin notes on various tooltips/screens (field of science, blueprint type).

- [fix] House support a reform option will now disregard completed reforms since supporting those makes no sense anymore.


Compatibility note: NO CHANGE, this version works with v0.45+ savefiles (note that each time a savefile compatibility is broken a new Beta branch with the old version is created so you can always finish your game in progress).