Hello all,

Today we have a large series of updates, fixes and more from feedback gathered throughout launch. We're happy to have such a responsive community that helps us continue improve a game we are truly passionate about.

Audio 

• VO and Music now have separate volume controls. 

Art 

• Extra lines and blots have been removed from Citizen Images  

• Properly sized and compressed various tech images to improve memory usage. 

AlienGPT 

• In Chinese, available custom civilization selectable civ images now produce multiple options that are related to the faction description that the player comes up with (For example, Cat images are available if "Cosmic Cats" are used as a player-generated civ description)  

• Add a progress bar when saving factions generated by AlienGPT. 

• Flavortext OpenAI prompt fixes for Callsign generation. 

Battles 

• Slowed down camera movement after completion of battle    

• Ships no longer start on top of one another in the Battle Viewer   

• Non-combat ships on the losing side are automatically destroyed and not captured. 

Core 

• The game autosaves on the first turn. 

• If you are below the minimum resolution, the displayed dialog has explicit continue and exit buttons. 

• Fixed a problem where the mouse was constrained to the upper left-hand side of the screen. 

• Fixed various crashes 

Galaxy 

• Fixed a problem that would soft-lock the map gen for immense maps. 

• Max players and recommended players now adjust to actual numbers of sectors for better recommendations. It should make the galaxy feel a lot better. 

• Adjustments to stars to ensure that players' planet distance for AI players works better. 

• Single large sector size increased by 12,000 tiles. For reference, that's like adding a medium-sized map into the mix. 

• Explored areas are more visible.  

• Explored area color is darker. 

Gameplay 

AI 

• Genius AI buffs increased from 20% to 25%. 

• AI will look further out to determine threats. 

• AI is much better at declaring wars in response to threatening player behavior. 

• AI is better at colonizing planets in general. 

• Fixed the issue where AI was building too many fighters and not enough other classes 

• Pirates are now somewhat more aggressive at normal and higher level 

• Pirates will attack planets (at normal and higher levels) 

• AI is better at protecting its capital world when it detects threats. 

• AI is more intelligent at selecting targets. 

• Ai does not look for resources for non-mining Starbases. 

• Peaceful civilizations don't care about shared borders. 

Culture Traits 

• Tolerance Trait now only applies to Core Worlds.  

• Changed Diversity Trait Influence growth back to 2% per social skill for all specializations (Divine Empath). 

Events 

• The Great Amusement event was made less common. 

• Additional events enabled. 

• Additional anomaly events tested and enabled 

• Ensured Cosmic Needler 'Send to Shipyard' Option has the proper effect. 

• The "free constructor" option for the "Past Its Prime" event no longer lies and says it costs 50 credits. 

• Crisis events were made slightly more frequent to compensate for slower survey speed. 

• Earth is not an alien world to humans... or is it? 

Factions 

• Xeloxi now has access to the Colonial Law and Policy Tech. 

• Korath Command ships are no longer blocked due to the transport module  

• Festron are no longer progressive. They're collectivists. 

• Unwavering ability now triples the amount of influence needed to flip a planet. 

• Nocturnal Ability changes: Season of Dreaming influence buff reduced from 50% to 25%, and during this season, ship HP is reduced by 25%. Season of waking manufacturing ability reduced from 30% to 20%, and crime increased by 20% during this time. 

Improvements 

• Central Authority Offices now provide a 20% colony decay bonus  

• Orbital Academy is now a Civilization Achievement   

• The Defense Sabotage Module has been fixed to apply correctly to planetary defenses.  

• Improvements on planets without governors now do not cost Maintenance but also don't grant any bonuses. 

• Changed research bonus from using cosmic eye near a colony but failing the steal roll from a flat 30 to 25% of the research cost of the current tech.  

• Orbital upgrades can no longer be destroyed if doing so would reduce the number of upgrade slots on the colony. 

• Orbital Academy's description has been updated to provide more information. 

• Orbitals that provide little to no benefit for colonies are now removed.  

• Recruiting Station, Colonization Center, And Orbital Prison are now only buildable on Core Worlds. 

• Industrial Center cost was reduced from 25 to 20, and the Manufacturing bonus increased from 5% to 10% 

• The "Xeno Anthropology Center" now requires the Xeno Anthropology technology that is part of the Intuitive ability. 

Policies 

• Secret Police Policy now reduces crime properly.  

• Code of Law Policy now unlocks one policy slot.  

Pollution 

• Pollution now annoys citizens. The more pollution, the more annoyed they are. Some species don't care about pollution. 

• Pollution makes Radioactive species happy. 

• Some improvements now generate pollution as they level up 

• Tax penalties were slightly reduced to make up for the new pollution approval penalty. 

Ships 

• Enhanced Kinetic Weapons have been given higher damage to differentiate them from regular kinetic weapons.  

• Designs that don't match the ship style are now allowed to be added to a player's ship designs if they are part of the player's ship style set.  

• Fixed issue where not all missile and beam weapon components granted the ability to volley fire.  

• Ship upgrade cost reduced by 50%. 

• Ship Refit:  

  • You can no longer "refit" Command Ships 

  • Implement Hotkeys to map Left/Right Keyboard arrow keys  

  • Implemented hotkeys for navigating the ship refit menu via the left/right mouse arrow  

  • Fixed entries visibly late updating if they were selectable upgrades or not  

• Ship Designer: Verify Targeting Priorities for Ship Classes   

  • Ships available in Ship Designer now display correct Targeting Priorities  

Starbases 

• Starbase spacing increased from 3 tiles to 4 tiles. 

• Military Starbases will auto volley its missiles. 

• Balance pass on Starbase modules 

• More advanced Starbase modules now cost Maintenance. 

• Reduced the effect of some of the higher-level modules to prevent invulnerable ships and teleporting ships due to Starbase stacking. 

Tech 

• Hatcheries Tech Icon and colors have been updated to be consistent with growth techs.  

• Lossless mining tech now provides a proper production Yield bonus.  

• Coordinated Travel tech now works as designed, and its tooltip has been updated to explain better how it works.  

• Freighters can now be designed after the Universal Translator has been unlocked.  

• You can no longer research Technological Singularity multiple times.  

• "Consensus Maker" Tech is now reliably unlocked by the Sanctuary trait.  

• "Domestic Policy Doctrine" is now unlocked with the Bureaucrats ability. 

• "Colonial Governance" technology is now unlocked by the Bureaucrats ability. 

• "Xeno Anthropology" tech is now unlocked by Intuitive ability. 

• "Starship Refits" now gives a +25% bonus to moves when a ship is in its ZOC. 

• "Starship Refits" tech moved to only require Orbital Assembly instead of Cruisers to ensure it's available earlier. 

• Tech inflation multiplier reduced from 2.5% per tech to 2.0% per tech for better pacing. 

Other 

• Fixed achievements that weren't triggering correctly 

• Prevent "Persuasive" exploits on the Trade screen with the choice. 

• Asteroid bases can now be manually set without reverting to the nearest core world each turn. Once the owner is changed for any reason, or if the mining base is destroyed, it reverts to attaching to the nearest core world until manually set again.  

• Loyalty Ability now grants 10 Culture Points instead of 1 when a command ship is made.  

• Stars no longer block planet colonization because they are too close to one another.  

• Rebellion Points required for a colony to flip increased so that planets take somewhat longer to culture flip. 

• The maximum number of rebelling points added per turn is reduced from 6 to 5. 

• Reduced space monster count 

• Adjusting to default max players makes the count feel more in line with what fits well. 

• Auto-explore is no longer predictable in which direction it will pick to explore, which should make them explore a lot more efficiently (Hat tip to Beric01) 

• Removed the penalty for firing governors. 

• The "Turns to Survey" increased from 3 to 4 to reduce popup spam. 

• There is a slight balance pass on Prestige victory to make it slightly easier on medium and more enormous maps. 

• Print money control cost was reduced from 60 to 45, and the cooldown increased from 15 to 18 turns. 

• The time for a planet to culture flip slightly increased. 

• Pirate spawning on common increased from 2.4% to 3.0% 

• Generic citizens now have lower expectations (i.e., easier to please) than specialists. 

Localization / Text 

• Cleaned up flavor text for Cosmic Containment – "Mitosis Executive Order." 

• Undesired "Xeno Biology" wording has been removed from the description of its Research screen infocards  

• The name and description of techs in Tech Navigator are now consistent between the card and tooltip.  

• Removed garbage characters from the Colonize Hotspot/Galactapedia  

• The default language now matches both the Steam and Epic platform languages. 

• Polish AI Text Generation now works as designed  

• Intro movies now have subtitles for non-English languages  

• Language code fixes for Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Korean  

• Fixed translation issues with Italian  

• Updated spacing displayed after colons for Chinese  

• Fixed numerous typos 

• German text updates part 1. 

• Updated the Description of Federation Government 

• Fixed a problem that caused the wrong voice-over language to play 

• Spanish language improvements. 

• Description of the robot servant changed to reference a core world instead of a colony. 

Missions/Tutorial 

• The Opportunity - Added additional scenario goals.  

• The Opportunity - Adjusted flow and added more explanations for forming fleets and engaging in combat. 

• Campaigns can now be created where a player does not start with a shipyard, and to get a shipyard, the Construct a Shipyard tech is required.  

• Custom factions are now available when starting a new game after retiring from the Tutorial.  

• The Tutorial Advisor Bot window no longer flickers.   

• Tutorial: The player is now able to navigate the Tech Tree without encountering errors  

• Pirates no longer spawn inside of stars. 

MP  

• Fixed desyncs in battles 

• Fixed MP-related crashes 

• Display the correct text if you join an MP lobby where the host has a different language.   

• Text next to the Icon showing which player's turn is now consistently displayed.  

• Multiplayer desync debug files are no longer deleted on the next game launch.  

• A peer is now able to join a Multiplayer game reliably.  

• Prevent stuck turns when re-authenticating with the platform in mid-game.  

UI 

• Clean up sizing and layout of the stats and colonies list entries.  

• UI has been updated on stats, and colonies list entries to better accommodate for sizing and layout.  

• Advisor text entries can be wrapped without clipping.  

• Rename Ship dialog now has an icon. 

• The player can now correctly use the scroll bar on the Civilization Screen in all resolutions. 

• Updated Weapon tooltip Infocard to properly report mass. Resolves confusion where players could add weapons (e.g., Railguns) even though it appeared that the mass limits weren't being exceeded.   

• UI was adjusted to accommodate longer names on the Custom Civilization Screen.  

• Current tech being researched is no longer removed from research queues when a tech trade is made.   

• Ship design template thumbnails now show the correct ships.  

• Civilization Capital tooltip now displays in the planet UI. 

• Players can now scroll through text in the Research window.  

• Influence Growth on Starbase Infocard now displays the correct tooltip instead of the Gross income tooltip.  

• Custom Civs screen:  

  • Reset small portrait tabs to avoid having strange behavior with checkmarks and removing citizen info.   

  • Hid the "Browse" button on screens where it isn't usable. 

  • Replace failed to generate text with default text when a response fails when creating custom civilization.  

  • There are now two Civilization Abilities dropdowns on the abilities tab on the custom screen/ 

  •  Civilization Abilities dropdowns are sorted alphabetically.  

• Added a new "Your Civilization" tab to the Data Bank Window, showing information related to Your Civilization  

• Add game options for showing movie subtitles. 

•  Ensure the Distance and Estimated Travel Time (when selecting a ship and holding the CONTROL key) are correct.   

• Update the Crisis startup window with text and descriptions in a list box and description auto-size.   

• Increased size of the Anomaly tooltip to better accommodate longer text. 

• Fixed font color for Anomaly window.  

• Fix text sizing and clipping on multiple screens.  

• Ensured Fleet tooltip positions "Hold shift to lock tooltip" in the correct location. 

• Top-aligned Inline icons are no longer cropped.  

• Resetting defaults in Galaxy settings no longer resets the player's race to Terran.  

• Animations are now stopped whenever the diplomacy screen is closed.  

• The In-Game Menu logo is now silver instead of gold.  

• Added Tooltips for Biology, Cultural Affinity, Behaviors, and Planet Type in the Civ Creation Screen  

• Fixed text overlap and clipping on the Bazaar and Recruit/Minister cards.  

• Fixed rendering and resizing issues on event popups.  

• Filtering has been fixed on the Executive Order popup button.  

• Update the Medium UI prestige bar to scale correctly.  

• Enable Free Form Design by default. 

• Slightly bigger font sizes with corresponding screen tweaks. 

• Add planet class tooltip to the planet infocard. 

• Add a background to the custom civ progress bar 

• Added a tooltip when hovering over a civilization on the databank or in the civilization faction power list.